This file photo shows a worker with the EPA. (AP)

EXCLUSIVE: Eight Environmental Protection Agency employees who racked up a total of more than ten years’ worth of paid “administrative leave” between 2011 and 2014 -- valued at more than $1,096,000 -- apparently did so because they were involved in “cases of alleged serious misconduct,” Fox News has learned.

In a memorandum sent from EPA’s acting assistant administrator, Nanci  E. Gelb, to EPA’s inspector general, Arthur Elkins -- a draft also was given to Fox News -- the agency has revealed that at least three of the affected employees have now left EPA.

All of the eight “were or are subject to a disciplinary process,” an EPA official told Fox News, adding that, “we cannot comment on the circumstances of their departure from the agency for those who are no longer employed by EPA.”

The exact nature of the alleged wrongdoings has not been revealed, nor the specific times when they took place. But the lengthy absences -- up to three years in one case -- seem to indicate that the alleged misconduct actions, whether linked or separate, cover a substantial period of time, even after their discovery.

The document from EPA’s Gelb to EPA’s inspector general, intended as an elaboration on the highlighted periods of administrative leave, made no mention of the issue of wrongdoing in relation to the departures or to the leaves granted to any other employee included in the OIG report.