Unnamed 'whistleblowers' cry foul over Infy BPO exec sacking

One email accused a senior employee of sexual harassment, another questioned management's treatment of Mathews' alleged breach of model code of conduct

India's second largest information technology (IT) services company Infosys may have put an end to several of its business-related issues, but the Bengaluru-based company is now faced with another sticky situation. Over the last few weeks, several media outfits have received anonymous emails from senders claiming to be the company's employees and 'whistle blowers'.

While the first such email, which accused a senior employee of the company of sexual harassment, was received by this publication a few weeks ago, on Wednesday another email from an unidentified sender raised questions about Infosys' management's conduct around the issue of non-compliance with the model code of conduct by Abraham Mathews, chief financial officer (CFO) of Infosys business process outsourcing (BPO) subsidiary.

The sender of the email who claimed himself as an employee belonging to the Finance Department of Infosys said that the issue that triggered the exit of the CEO and CFO of Infosys BPO relates to overbilling of a client by a project manager for over a period of last 18 months or so. "The concerned project manager had done this over billing due to pressure of growth and revenues from the top management. The manager also faked some of the bills to provide rewards to the employees," the email which was marked to the company's board members including the CEO & COO, said.

Infosys had on late Tuesday evening said it has sacked Mathews for "not complying with its code of conduct" while Gautam Thakkar, chief executive officer of Infosys BPO, had quit, taking moral responsibility for the incident. It was reliably learnt that it was related to some financial irregularities in one of its BPO centres.

The mail also alleged that even though the issue of over-billing was brought up n the disclosure committee meetings several times and discussed, Infosys allegedly did not record the proceedings of the meetings 'conveniently'. "Now, the board had taken the action on the CEO and CFO of Infosys BPO as there were internal control weakness," the email said.

Incidentally, the client the 'whistleblower' mail refers to is one of Infosys top 10 clients which contributes over $200 million in annualized revenues. Business Standard prefers to maintain the anonymity of the name without any valid proof.

In response to a detailed email questionnaire, Infosys said it has already made the required disclosures. "The financial irregularities are not material in nature and the company has already made required disclosures. The company has taken disciplinary action on employees," an Infosys spokesperson said in a written statement. The company also declined to comment on client specific matters and the investigation saying "they are confidential in nature".

According to sources within the company, multiple people in Infosys BPO were involved in the financial irregularities. The company has sacked most of them after investing into the incident by internal as well independent investigation teams.