Infy asked to pay Rs 12.17 crore to former CFO Bansal

Country's second largest IT services company, Infosys Ltd, has lost the arbitration over severance package to its former CFO Rajiv Bansal, as a result of which the company has been ordered to pay the outstanding amount of Rs 12.17 crore, along with interest.

"The arbitral tribunal has communicated its decision in the arbitration proceedings in relation to the severance agreement between the company and its former CFO, Rajiv Bansal," Infosys said in a BSE filing.

The company has said that it will take legal advice for further action on the issue.

"While the award acknowledges that Infosys had bona fide disputes, its counter claim for refund of previously paid severance amount of Rs 5.2 crore and damages, has been rejected," the filing said, adding that the arbitral award is confidential.

The IT firm had agreed to pay Bansal a severance amount of Rs 17.38 crore or 24 months of salary, but the company suspended payments after he got Rs 5 crore as co-founder N R Narayana Murthy and others objected to the severance package as excessive.

Bansal's severance pay-out has been one of the issues that Infosys founders had raised to allege governance lapses at the IT major. The payment, which came into force in 2016, created lot of outcry among the founder-promoters of the company, with Murthy alleging that such payment was "hush money" to cover up some secrets.

Infosys is said to have filed a counter claim of Rs 100 crore against Bansal for the alleged breach of confidentiality. Sources in the know suggest that the company had stopped the payment to Bansal of charges of deletion of the data from systems.

Bansal, after the stoppage, had dragged his former employer to arbitration to claim the remaining Rs 12 crore of his severance pay.