In a communication to the TCS chief executive officer and chief operating officer, a whistleblower had alleged that the global head of TCS’ resource management group, ES Chakravarthy, accepted commissions from staffing firms for years.

Acting on the complaint, TCS reportedly set up a panel of three executives including chief information security officer Ajit Menon to probe the allegations, HT’s sister website Livemint reported.

After weeks of probe, TCS sent Chakravarthi on leave, sacked four executives of the recruitment group and blacklisted three staffing firms. The company is yet to reveal the scale of irregularities. But one of the two executives mentioned above said those involved in the scam allegedly earned at least ₹100 crore via commissions.

The under-fire staffing division head had joined the company in 1997. He used to report to the COO Natarajan Ganapathy Subramaniam and has now been debarred from coming to office. This email ID is still active, the website had learnt.

The resource management group, also known as RMG, is 3,000-staffers strong and places almost 1,400 engineers including new recruits on projects daily. Last year, TCS earned $27.93 billion in revenue and has 6,14,795 employees.

Usually, companies like TCS preferably hire employees through referral programmes and staffing firms. These firms hire temporary workers or contractors. It is the first such development in the company since K Krithivasan joined TCS as CEO on June 1.

An executive on condition of anonymity said it is not known for how long this alleged scam was going on. The executive said the company hired over three lakh people in the past three years. Even if ten per cent of the recruitment was made via selected staffing firms who gave a commission on each person recruited, then the scale of the scam would be at least ₹100 crore.