Infosys forced Apple to pay more for less

8eea64e0563590b07a4d93537eb2851fSome top Infosys executives have cleaned out their desks and been escorted from the building after it was discovered that the outfit had been daring to overcharge the margin king Apple.

Infosys, India’s second-largest IT services exporter, said on Tuesday it had fired Abraham Mathews, chief financial officer of its Infosys BPO unit, for failure to comply with the company’s code of conduct.

Infosys BPO chief executive officer Gautam Thakkar resigned on “moral grounds” and would leave the company on November 30, Infosys said. It did not give details about the charges against Mathews.

“The financial irregularities are not material in nature and the company has already made required disclosures. The company has taken disciplinary action on employees,” the company said. The irregularities in Infosys BPO’s dealings with Apple came out during an internal audit.

Though the audit showed that the financial impact of the wrongdoing on the company was minimal, Infosys decided to take a tough stance to demonstrate its “zero-tolerance policy for any improper conduct,” he said.

Reports from India suggest that six more people will be fired soon after investigations revealed that they had produced inflated invoices and allegedly overbilled Apple for many months.

The thought of Apple being overcharged for a service that actually cost a lot less, strikes us as a little ironic and would be confirmation of the doctrine of karma, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Infosys earlier this year brought in Vishal Sikka as its new CEO to chart a new strategy for the company, once a trendsetter for India’s more than $100 billion IT outsourcing industry. Infosys has struggled in recent years to retain staff and market share, the fact it has to fire a few cannot help things.