Whistleblower crisis: Infosys may need some private time to fix itself

India’s best-known software exporter is facing an impossible trinity of sorts: Out of sales, margins and governance, Infosys can hit only two goals at a time.

Or so it would appear from yet-to-be-proven whistle-blower allegations against Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh and Chief Financial Officer Nilanjan Roy that they used hyper-aggressive accounting practices to hide from investors the lack of profitability on large deals. The stock tanked as much as 16 per cent in Mumbai after the letter was published by the Deccan Herald.

It’s a deja vu moment for co-founder and non-executive Chairman Nandan Nilekani, who returned to the Bangalore-based company two years ago during a previous crisis — sparked by a set of different anonymous charges against Parekh’s predecessor, the former SAP executive Vishal Sikka, who was accused of impropriety in a $200 million acquisition in Israel.