Infosys has reportedly undertaken a marketing and PR housecleaning in the United States, leading to the exit of Paul Gottsegen, the Infosys chief marketing officer who was outspoken in labeling Infosys employee and whistleblower Jay Palmer as a liar when Palmer testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in 2011.
Gottsegen’s departure comes amid unconfirmed reports that Infosys has laid off its entire PR and marketing team in the United States. What is confirmed is that Infosys no longer lists an Infosys PR contact for the United States on its website, and is instead directing inquiries to Golin Harris, a Chicago-based PR firm. Until very recently, the website listed the PR contact for the Americas as Danielle D’Angelo, an Infosys employee in New York. Now, the contact is Ken Montgomery, a Golin Harris executive director in San Francisco. PR inquiries in all other regions of the world are still being directed to Infosys.
According to Livemint.com, a media outlet in India that’s affiliated with the Wall Street Journal, Gottsegen left Infosys on Monday and joined Mindtree, another Indian outsourced services provider, as head of marketing and strategy. Gottsegen in 2011 released a statement condemning Palmer, the Infosys whistleblower, who detailed alleged immigration fraud conducted by Infosys in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Refugees and Border Security. Gottsegen claimed that Palmer’s testimony was “full of inaccuracies, exaggerations and falsehoods,” and that Palmer was “obviously intent on spreading his falsehoods about Infosys and our business practices as broadly as possible in order to advance his objective of getting as big of a payout as he can from the Company.”
According to two knowledgeable sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, Infosys has disbanded its U.S. PR and marketing team, resulting in layoffs of the U.S. employees and the return of the Indian employees to India. The number of employees affected is unknown. I have been unable to independently confirm the layoffs, because repeated emails and phone messages directed to Montgomery have been ignored. An email to Golin Harris’s headquarters in Chicago was also ignored.
A multi-agency U.S. government investigation of Infosys, which was triggered by Palmer’s whistleblower report, is ongoing.
