Infosys ordered to pay Rs. 12.20 crore on losing arbitration
Infosys has been ordered to pay an outstanding severance payment of Rs. 12.20 crore to former Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Rajiv Bansal. This was the result of more than a year-long arbitration between the two parties.
Bansal left the company in 2015. He was supposed to get a severance payment of Rs. 17.38 crore at the time of his departure. This is equivalent to 24 months’ pay. But Infosys provided him only Rs. 5 crore and withheld the rest of the amount. They gave the reason that Bansal had not met certain obligations. As a result, the vengeance-seeking Bansal dragged the company into the depths of arbitration.
On Tuesday, Infosys announced in a statement, “Per the award, Infosys is required to pay Mr. Bansal the outstanding severance amount of Rs. 12.17 crores with interest. While the award acknowledges that Infosys had bona fide disputes, its’ counter claim for refund of previously paid severance amount of Rs. 5.2 crores and damages, has been rejected.”
Infosys had actually filed a counterclaim of Rs.100 crore against its former CFO. This was for the alleged breach of confidentiality agreements. Some sources say that the payment was stopped on charges that Bansal deleted data from official systems.
Over the past year and a half, there have been multiple hearings in Bengaluru. Judge RV Raveendran was the sole arbitrator in the case.
The huge amount of money was withheld after its co-founders, led NR Murthy said that the huge payout was “hush money” for hiding issues of poor corporate government under the former management team led then CEO Vishal Sikka.
Investigations foreign and independent bodies have revealed that such allegations are false and baseless. Infosys now has to pay the huge sum of money to its former CFO and this fiasco, although over, will act as a drawback for the company for the years to come.
