Washington: Major American IT player Cognizant will pay $25 million to the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) to settle its India bribery charges, as Departme-nt of Justice filed criminal ca-ses against two if its former to-p executives. As alleged in the complaint, Cognizant’s pr-esident Gordon Coburn and Chief Legal Officer Steven E. Schwartz authorised the contractor to pay the bribe and directed their subordinates to conceal the bribe by doctoring the contractor’s change orders.
The SEC also alleges that Cognizant authorised the construction firm to make two additional bribes totaling more than USD 1.6 million.
Cognizant allegedly used sham change order requests to conceal the payments it made to reimburse the firm, SEC said.The SEC charged Coburn and Schwartz with violating anti-bribery, books and records, and internal accounting controls provisions of the federal securities laws.
