Satyam Computer Services, India's fourth largest sofware exporter is in the eye of a storm amid reports that the company has been asked by the World Bank to stop all offshore work at the the Bank's outsourcing centre in Chennai.

Media reports over the weekend claimed that World Bank's computer network got raided repeatedly though there was no information about the data that was lost. The reports quoted an e-mail fired out by the Bank's senior technology manager who described it as an "unprecedented crisis" with media networks in the US once again going to town with their bleats about data threats in countries like India and China.

Fox News went to the extent of quoting un-named officials quoting World Bank President Robert Zoellick as wanting Satyam "off the premises", a report that was vehemently denied by a spokesman of the Bank. "Like other public and private institutions, the World Bank has repeatedly experienced hacking attacks on its computer systems and is constantly updating its security to defeat these. But at no point has a hacking attack accessed sensitive information in the World Bank's Treasury, procurement, anti-corruption or human resources departments," the spokesman had said.

Meanwhile, on its part Satyam too denied that it had been barred from doing offshore work for the Bank. "The story ran by some agencies was wrong and was riddled with falsehoods and errors. The story cites misinformation from unattributed sources and leaked e-mails that are taken out of context,' the statement said quoting the World Bank spokesperson.

The five-year contract between the bank and Satyam lapsed in September. The Hyderabad-based company had bagged the contract in 2003 to implement enterprise resource planning solution, extend document management and integrated messaging system. It has development and delivery centres in the US, Canada, Brazil, the UK, Hungary, Egypt, UAE, India, China, Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia, serving over 600 clients.