The public service broadcaster BBC reported on Friday that Infosys, India’s second-largest IT service provider by sales, is closing its Russia operation. The news comes after the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak was chastised for his wife Akshata Murty’s ownership of a Bengaluru-based firm co-founded by her father, NR Narayana Murthy.
Infosys will be the first Indian IT business to leave Russia as a result of this. Infosys’ representative declined to comment on the matter.
Sunak was first questioned about his family’s ties to Infosys, a company in which Murty owns a 0.91 per cent interest.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told Sky News that it was critical for the Chancellor (or finance minister) to reveal whether his family had been “benefiting from money made in Russia when the [UK] government has imposed sanctions” on firms and individuals, according to the BBC. It was “in the public interest,” according to Starmer.
Sunak told the BBC’s Newscast podcast that he was “fair game” for criticism since he was in public life, but it was “extremely upsetting and, I believe, wrong” for individuals to try to attack his wife.
Infosys announced it has no “active business partnerships with local Russian firms.”
This was to clarify its operations in Moscow, which had been subjected to severe economic sanctions as a result of the invasion of Ukraine.
In 2016, as part of a multi-million dollar and multi-year engineering services outsourcing arrangement with Italian engineering firm Ansaldo Energia, Infosys opened engineering service delivery centres in Moscow and Karlovac, Croatia.
This was done to make engineering support for Ansaldo Energia’s acquisition of the business of US giant General Electric and French major Alstom Energy easier. As a long-term partner of both GE-Alstom and Ansaldo Energia, Infosys won the contract. According to statistics from HfS Research, it had no footprint in the region previous to the transaction.
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