Whistleblower a liar, fortune-hunter, retorts Infosys

A day after Jay Palmer, a former Infosys Technologies employee, provided damning written testimony to US senate subcommittee holding a hearing on immigration reforms, India’s second-largest software company came on hard against the whistleblower, calling Palmer’s commentary “full of inaccuracies, exaggerations and falsehoods.”

“The commentary submitted today (Tuesday) by Palmer (through US Senator Charles Grassley) to the senate judiciary subcommittee on immigration, refugees and border security, is full of inaccuracies, exaggerations and falsehoods,” said Paul N Gottsegen, chief marketing officer of Infosys, in a statement.

“Palmer is obviously intent on spreading his falsehoods about Infosys and our business practices as broadly as possible in order to advance his objective of getting as big a payout as he can from the company,” said Gottsegen.

“There is not, nor was there ever, a strategy, scheme, or policy by the company to use the B-1 visa programme to circumvent the H-1B visa programme,” he said.

Gottsegen said the company did not have a practice of sending unskilled employees to the US on B-1 visas to do the work expected of skilled individuals in the US on H-1B visas.

On Tuesday, Palmer testified before a senate subcommittee that his ‘internal whistleblower complaint was ignored’ by Infosys and he was ‘threatened, harassed and retaliated against’ in the company’s bid to cover up visa and tax frauds.

“Infosys has maliciously violated the spirit of the whistleblower policy and the law,” he wrote in his testimony.

Infosys’s response to this charge on Wednesday: “Palmer’s complaints were handled in complete accordance with our published procedures for handling whistleblower complaints and in compliance with the law. The company did not retaliate against or mistreat Palmer in any way.”

“As for the rest of Palmer’s commentary, it is rife with mis-statements. However, we will not now take on a point-by-point rebuttal of his comments and instead we will leave that to the current litigation,” said Gottsegen.

Infosys, which has been caught in a whirlwind of visa issues that was affecting its relationship with customers, said it would strive to see that the company’s integrity and compliance with law were not comprised.

“To that end, we have made and may continue to make changes in our policies regarding immigration and visa requirements with the intent of having the absolute best practices in place,” the company said in its statement.

Late February this year, Palmer filed a lawsuit against Infosys alleging visa and tax frauds that has led to US government launching a criminal investigation.

He accused Infosys of increasing the use of the B-1 visa program to get around the tough restrictions the US had placed on the H-1B programme by sending lower level and unskilled Infoscions to the US to fulfill the high demand of its customers at a lower cost.

He said this was done to shore up profits of the company. “Please note that at a time of economic volatility and crisis in the US, Infosys stock tripled,” Palmer wrote in his testimony.

“These companies (like Infosys) maliciously do not hire Americans and look at ways to circumvent policy and law instead of working with it. Look at the stock and growth of these large foreign companies in a down environment — they are not suffering. However, they are still asking for more “handouts” to increase their margin. Every company is out to make a profit, but when you knowingly defraud the system it is concerning ..,” said Palmer in his appeal for justice on Tuesday.