Tata Consultancy Services has dismissed four executives for allegedly receiving bribes from staffing firms that recruited contractual employees for the company, Mint reported on Saturday.

The company has also sent its global head of the Resource Management Group, ES Chakravarthy, on leave and blacklisted three recruitment firms.

The action was initiated after a whistleblower, in communication with the company’s chief executive officer and chief operating officer of TCS, had alleged that Chakravarthy had been accepting commissions from staffing firms for years, according to The Economic Times.

Following the complaint, Tata Consultancy Services had set up a panel of three executives, including chief information security officer Ajit Menon, to probe the allegations.

An unidentified executive of the company told Mint that while the scale of the irregularities is yet to be ascertained, the people involved in the alleged scam may have earned at least Rs 100 crore through commissions.

“The entire senior leadership is shocked,” another unidentified executive said. “This makes you question if there were enough guardrails, and how could such a thing happen. The disturbing thing is that we don’t know how pervasive and for how long this scam was continuing.”

The executive added that the company has hired over 3,00,000 people, including contractors since 2020. “Even if 10% of the entire recruitment was made through selected staffing firms and the staffing firm gave a commission on every person recruited, you can imagine the scale of this scandal,” the executive said.

On its part, Tata Consultancy Services refuted any “scam” in its recruitment process and added that recruitment activities in the company are not handled by the Resource Management Group.

“RMG [Resource Management Group] is responsible for allocation of available resources to various projects and in case of any shortfall, fill such requirements through contractors,” the company said in a statement.

It added that the issue relates to a breach of the company’s code of conduct by certain employees and vendors providing contractors and that no key managerial person of Tata Consultancy Services has been found to be involved.