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Intel fires several employees in its Bangalore facility over fraudulent invoicing. By Rahul Sachitanand It's the IT industry's dirty little secret, and after Intel fired over 200 employees from its Bangalore facility over the last few months, the cat's out of the bag. Over-cooking invoices has been alleged for a long time, but it's an internal audit that has bought the clandestine misdeeds to the forefront. While a couple of hundred heads have already rolled for their misdemeanours, the cull may not be done yet, with the clean out in progress and several more heads likely to roll. This purge, part of the company's Business Practice Excellence programme created two years ago, began with a move to track suspicious LTA and house rent claims and ended with the company directing several employees to quit. The Santa Clara, California-based company, which employs over 2,700 people across its India operations, was quick to initiate a damage limitation exercise. "The matter relates to code of conduct violation. Intel does expect very high standards of employee conduct and business ethics. We can say that we conduct all investigations thoroughly, professionally and in compliance with the law," an Intel statement said. Avoiding taxes appears to be the main reason to fake bills and vouchers, since you can, for example, make two tax-free LTA claims within four years, says Sudheendra L., a Bangalore-based chartered accountant. "This is a major incentive for many people, especially when the amount to be billed is relatively low, then the tendency is to often pass a bill without getting into inspections or audits," another finance exec feels. In the case of travel allowance, for example, several employees were said to have claimed an allowance without actually leaving Bangalore and fraudulently claimed driver allowances. The real discoveries may however be made going forward, with areas such as house rent allowance and on-call payment being those where even more skeletons are expected to be discovered, and ducking taxes expected to be the main motivation again. So what was the spark for this quick action? Some suggest that the government may have quietly pointed out the losses it was incurring due to fake claims by Intel employees, when talks were on for a possible India plant, while others contend that several employees' actions were being monitored for a while and the dismissals were only the end result. Intel has meanwhile tightened screws on the allowances front, asking for actual bills for travel (including airline boarding cards) when issuing LTA and petrol station bills and credit card vouchers before making any payments.
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