Whistleblowing Or Crying Wolf At Infosys?

Infosys has been no stranger to anonymous complaints, but the whistleblower mechanism may have just devolved into a tool to rock the IT services giant’s boat

- Kunal Talgeri

Be careful with this message, warned Google Mail on October 20. It was referring to an 8.42 am email in my inbox. “‘Whistleblower’ has never sent you messages using this email address,” opined Google, with an auto option to report the sender for phishing.

Indeed, the Sunday morning email was from an Infosys whistleblower, but from a new username and domain address. It wasn’t from the Infosys whistleblower of 2017 and 2018, which came from a different email address and username.

The 2017-18 batch of whistleblower complaints had built on a set of explosive moot points from yet another whistleblower in 2016, which centered around “serious corporate governance issues and conflict of interest issues” under Vishal Sikka, the CEO of Infosys until August 2017.

Marking journalists on emailed whistleblower complaints had become a covert method in the 2017 campaign to usurp Sikka and change the board of directors under R Seshasayee, giving the informants mileage on mass media. WhatsApp, an instant messenger, enhanced the whistleblowers’ reach. The campaign ended with the resignations of Sikka and Seshasayee.

The allegations were never proven, at least not to the public. This was unusual for Infosys, in which promoters control only 13 percent of a publicly-listed company, and hence leaned towards a culture of timely disclosures and accountability. But the Infosys board under chairman Nandan Nilekani neither admitted nor denied the findings of the 2017 inquiry into the Panaya buyout. The whistleblowers had repeatedly questioned the acquisition. The board, satisfied with the independent inquiry, wanted Infosys back to business.