Three employees of Infosys Ltd., who have been accused of accessing personal information and hastening the income tax refund process, have been terminated on the charge of violating company policies. The three employees illegally contacted the income tax assessees and hastened the refund process for a gain.
On Sunday, the IT behemoth, which is the technology partner for the Income Tax Department’s Central Processing Centre (CPC) at Electronics City here, said that the employees had been terminated after a “thorough internal investigation”. It said the company took any breach of its policies and code of conduct seriously, and added, “We are fully cooperating with the authorities.”
The statement from Infosys comes after three of its employees — Renukakunta Kalyan Kumar, Deveeshwar Reddy, and Prakash — working at the CPC were arrested by the Electronics City police.
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Sources in the department said the trio had contacted those assessees whose PAN had been flagged owing to major discrepancies, which meant the refund would take time till the case was cleared at the CPC. Sources said that since refunds would be delayed for such flagged PANs, the accused contacted the assessees directly and offered to process the returns for a commission of 4%.
According to the FIR registered based on a complaint from senior I-T official Sibichen Mathew, Renukakunta Kalyan Kumar took the help of the others in the crime. He would send a message to the assessee and promise to release the refund within seven days. One such case listed in the FIR pertained to the returns of about ₹15.89 lakh, which he illegally released and took 4% commission. The FIR also stated that they were involved in several such acts.