World Bank bars Wipro from doing biz with it

Washington, Jan 12 (PTI) India's third largest software exporter Wipro joined bribery-tainted Satyam in a club of companies barred from doing business with the World Bank on the charges of offering improper benefits to the Bank staff.

Wipro was followed by Megasoft, the third Indian software
vendor to have attracted the Bank's ire, while non-IT vendors
Nestor Pharmaceuticals and Gap International and an individual
Surendra Singh were the other Indian entities to have faced
debarment action by the Bank.

While Wipro was barred for four years beginning June 2007
for "providing improper benefits to Bank staff", Megasoft
was barred for an identical period beginning December 2007 for
"participating in a joint venture with Bank staff while also
conducting business with the Bank," the global lender said in
a statement.

A Wipro statement said its representatives had in 2000
offered the World Bank, through its Chief Information Officer
and senior staff, participation in a Directed Share Programme.
Under this, Bank staff were offered American Depository Shares
of Wipro at IPO price.

However, the Bank determined in June 2007 the company
would be ineligible for the international lender's direct
contracts up to 2011, citing a conflict of interest policy.

Wipro said: "Our inability to get future business from
World Bank will not adversely affect our business and results
of operations." Megasoft too said that the debarment will not
have any revenue implication for the company.

Earlier, Satyam, which was debarred for eight years
beginning September 2008 on bribery charges, had demanded an
apology for making public its name and withdrawal of what it
called "inappropriate" statement by the Bank. The Bank had
refused to apologise.

All participants in Wipro's programme signed a
conflict-of-interest statement, saying that their purchase did
not violate any ethics or policies of their company. But the
Bank viewed it otherwise.

The World Bank statement said the action was initiated
against these entities and individual as they were found to
have "violated the fraud and corruption provisions of the
Procurement Guidelines or the Consultant Guidelines," besides
offering improper benefits to Bank staff.

In a statement late last night, the Bank said that it
decided to "make public the names of all the companies that
have been debarred from receiving direct contracts from the
Bank group under its corporate procurement programme.

"This change was made in the interest of fairness and
transparency... From now on the Bank group would publicly list
names of companies debarred from its corporate procurement."

In the list of "ineligible" firms released by the Bank,
over a 100 companies or individuals - some of the
Indian-origin - have been barred temporarily or life.

The list includes Gurpreet Singh Malik, Vikram Deepak
Gursahaney, Kamal Sharda and Sharda Impex (UK Ltd) in Nigeria,
as well as Labh Singh Gill, Labh Universal, Pradeep Menon,
Shivshanker Pre Nair and Pradeep S Nair in the UK and Mandeep
S Sandhu in the US. All these entities are permanently barred.

In case of a debarred individual, the ineligibility
extends to any firm which the debarred individual directly or
indirectly controlled, the Bank said.

The UK and Indonesia account for a significant number of
debarred entities, while a number of entities debarred are
from Sweden, Nigeria and the US. PTI TEAM
SAK