Infosys-Palmer Visa Case To Go For Trial As Mediation Fails

By Sreeja VN | July 25 2012 5:52 AM

The whistleblower case between Infosys, India's second largest IT services exporter, and one of its employees in the U.S. would go to trial next month as a mediation conference Tuesday fell through.

Reuters

Engineers work in the control room at Infosys Technologies campus at Electronics City in Bangalore in this file photo.

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Jack Jay Palmer, an Infosys employee in Montgomery, Alabama, had accused the company of harassment and retaliation after his claim about the misuse of the U.S. visa programs by the company.

Infosys has denied the allegations of visa fraud and maintained that no retaliation or harassment has taken place towards Palmer.

Our sights are now set on presenting the facts of this case in open court on August 20, Infosys said in an emailed statement on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

The U.S. federal judge hearing Palmer's visa fraud allegation case had ordered both the parties to settle their disputes through mediation. According to sources, the mediation failed as Infosys denied any wrong doing and Palmer insisted on the company admitting its wrong doing. The case will go up for trial Aug 20.

Several months ago, Palmer had filed a lawsuit against the Indian IT major that the company had been misusing the U.S.B1 business visas. The B1 visas are issued for short-term business visits which will help the employees of a company participate in consultations or attend workshops or business meetings in the U.S. It is not an onsite work permit.

Companies can bring in foreign employees to the U.S. for fulltime work only on H1B1 visas. Palmer alleged that when the U.S. State Department had limited the number of H1B1 visas issued to the companies, Infosys started bringing in its Indian employees for fulltime onsite work, using B1 visa.

In his earlier media interviews, Palmer said that he had seen huge number of workers from India on the U.S. campus, which prompted him to dig further on how Infosys managed to bring large number of employees from India. He said that Infosys had paid less to the workers from India compared to the salary they paid to the Americans and the company had resorted to the visa fraud to evade taxes.

Following Palmers allegations of visa and tax fraud, a grand jury criminal probe was ordered against Infosys on the alleged irregularities and the trial for the same comes up in August.