Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has taken action against six employees and a similar number of staffing firms after investigating whistle-blower complaints on an alleged recruitment scam.

This was disclosed by N. Chandrasekaran, chairman, TCS, here on Thursday. The Tata group chief was responding to shareholder queries at its 28th annual general meeting.

He said the company is investigating the conduct or role of three more employees. Chandrasekaran added that TCS takes the violation of any ethical conduct very seriously.

“We have banned six employees and also six companies,” he said in response to questions from shareholders.

He said the company received two separate whistle-blower complaints — one pertaining to the appointment of business associates or contractual workers in the US, and one in India, in late February and March, after which it investigated the allegations.

Chandrasekaran said he cannot quantify the favours these employees got but the banned employees behaved in such a way that they were favouring certain firms.

“The company will look at the whole BA (Business Associate) supplier management process and see what the weaknesses are and will completely tighten the process to ensure that we do not have such incidents,” he said.

Last week, a report in the Mint had said that a whistleblower had written to the TCS CEO and also its chief operating officer alleging that a few senior employees had accepted bribes from staffing firms. The allegation was also that the global head of the company’s resource management group (RMG), which is its recruitment division, had been accepting commissions from staffing firms for years.

Reacting to the report, TCS said in a regulatory filing last Friday that it probed the allegations made in the complaint and found out that the charges do not “involve any fraud by or against the company and no financial impact’’.