Wipro employee accused of $4m fraud ‘committed suicide’

Indian IT outsourcer Wipro has confirmed reports that one of its employees, who last year was accused of defrauding the company of $4 million, committed suicide shortly after.

Anoop Argawal, who had worked in the controllership division of the business’s finance department for the last three years, died "within ten days of the incident coming to light", an anonymous source told the Press Trust of India.

It is alleged that Argawal, who was responsible for administering Wipro’s financial books, committed fraud by stealing a company password before transferring funds into his own bank account.

Wipro has since begun an internal investigation into its auditing procedures that has so far resulted in six of its employees being fired for negligence.

The scandal has again raised questions over the soundness of Indian service providers’ corporate governance procedures following 2008’s Satyam fiasco, when Satyam Computers chairman Ramalinga Raju admitted to years of fraudulent accounting practices.

Peter Done

Peter Done is managing director of Peninsula Business Services, the personnel and employment law consultancy he set up having already built a successful betting shop business.

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