Ashneer Grover has written to BharatPe, requesting that CEO Suhail Sameer and Rajnish Kumar be prosecuted.

  • April 8, 2022, 11:44 a.m.

BharatPe, Bengaluru In a fresh missive sent to the BharatPe board by Ashneer Grover, cofounder and former managing director of the fintech startup, he has asked to serve a "show cause" notice to the company's CEO, Suhail Sameer. This came a day after Sameer responded to a post on the professional networking platform, LinkedIn, where he alleged that Grover "stole money" from BharatPe.

On April 6, an IT associate at BharatPe wrote on LinkedIn that he and other staffers had not received their salaries for March. To this, Grover replied by asking BharatPe to look into the matter. The next day, his sister, Aashima Grover, also joined in, describing BharatPe's top management as a "shameless bunch". The conversation took a turn when Sameer responded, "Tere bhai ne saara paisa chura liya (your brother stole all the money). very little left to pay salaries. " Later on, Sameer apologised for his message.

In his letter shot off at Friday midnight, Grover alleged that Sameer was under the influence of "alcohol" and "drugs" when he put in the said reply and that he should be put on "leave of absence" immediately.

As a board under the chairmanship of Rajnish Kumar has claimed to be the epitome of corporate governance, I would want to ask what action the board is going to take against Suhail Sameer.

He added that Sameer put his reply "in the wee hours of April 7, after a night of drunken debauchery" at BharatPe’s offsite in Goa. 

In addition, Grover also demanded the resignation of BharatPe board chairman and veteran banker Rajnish Kumar, stating that under his leadership, the current management feels that they have "carte blanche from the board and its chairman to target him (Grover) and his family." Moreover,

the chairman, Rajnish Kumar, should immediately resign. The current incident clearly brings out the fact that Rajnish Kumar's condoning of the life threat to me by Bhavik Koladiya from his own house and all the planned media leaks leading to my resignation in self-respect, has further emboldened the current management to act as hooligans, "said Grover. ET reported earlier that Grover, along with BharatPe’s investors Sequoia Capital, BeeNext, and cofounder Shashvat Nakrani, had bought out Koladiya’s stake in the company. In his

letter on Friday, he said, "It also proves that in the governance review, which was supposed to be all-encompassing, the chairman refused to look into the allegations made against Suhail altogether."

A BharatPe spokesperson couldn’t be immediately reached for a comment.

Grover had also previously attacked Kumar in one of his letters to the board in February, saying the entire governance review was a "facade" and that it was "riddled with premeditation, bias, and prejudice".

Author : Rajdhani Delhi Representative

Rajdhani delhi representative

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