Infosys CEO settles insider trading charges with Sebi for Rs 25 lakh

The IT giant agreed to pay Rs 25 lakh (around $30,000) for failing to have adequate controls to prevent insider trading, Sebi said.

Bengaluru: Infosys CEO Salil Parekh settled charges for failing to place adequate internal controls to prevent insider trading at India's No.2 IT services exporter during a 2020 contract, the country's markets regulator said on Thursday.

Parekh agreed to pay Rs 25 lakh (around $30,000) to settle the markets regulator's charge, which related to a contract for Infosys to provide US financial firm Vanguard with a cloud-based record-keeping platform.

Infosys publicly disclosed the deal in 2020, but the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said "certain information which was unpublished price sensitive information (UPSI) had not been considered as such by Infosys".

The regulator did not elaborate on what this information was but held Parekh accountable for what it considered a lapse in internal controls to prevent insider trading on that deal.

Since then, Infosys has drafted an internal policy to identify unpublished price-sensitive information and seek approval from its board and audit committee.

It has also started to provide a break-up of the total contract value of any deal in terms of average revenue per annum for comparison with its annual revenue.