BharatPe in a statement on Friday evening said that the company’s board is yet to receive any interim or final report of its forensic review after a Twitter post that allegedly had snapshots of the report went viral, earlier in the day.
The leaked snapshots of BharatPe’s forensic audit reports on Twitter showed that Alvarez and Marshal, a risk advisory firm that was hired by BharatPe last week, had found irregularities with recruitment and fake invoices involving the company’s embattled Co-founder and Managing Director Ashneer Grover. Grover’s wife Madhuri Grover is also linked to both the fraudulent schemes, according to the leaked snapshots.
Mint had first reported on Thursday that the preliminary investigation had highlighted two instances of fraud at BharatPe, operated by Resillient Innovations Pvt Ltd. The forensic report in the leaked snapshots was dated 24 January and was submitted to the board of BharatPe.
Last week, BharatPe had announced appointing Alvarez and Marshal to advise the company’s Board of Directors on its recommendations. The announcement had followed a report by Moneycontrol that said Madhuri Grover, too, went on leave, 10 days after Ashneer Grover informed BharatPe’s Board of Directors that he will be taking a voluntary leave of absence till the end of March.
Mint had also reported that BharatPe’s board had arrived at a decision to terminate the services of Ashneer Grover based on the preliminary report, even as it has commissioned a comprehensive report. Meanwhile, in a media interaction with Moneycontrol, Ashneer Grover said that he demands Rs 4,000 crore from investors to buy out his stake, if they want him to exit the company.
Ashneer Grover had gone on leave amid rising concerns over the co-founder's image after an anonymous audio clip went viral on social media earlier last month. In the audio clip Ashneer Grover is heard using abusive language against a banker. Ashneer Grover has said the audio clip is fake and he had tweeted that he will be back at work on April 1, 2022.
“After much deliberation and introspection, I plan to take temporary leave of absence from BharatPe till March end,” Ashneer Grover had said in a Tweet.
Since the announcement of Ashneer Grover's voluntary leave, the BharatPe saga has become murkier. In the above-mentioned media interaction with Moneycontrol, Ashneer Grover also publicly alleged BharatPe’s investors and the company’s Chief Executive Officer Suhail Sameer to have ‘arm-twisted’ him into going on leave.
Meanwhile, in another development, the Economic Times reported that Ashneer Grover was seeking removal of Suhail Sameer from the company’s board.
“We are deeply pained that the integrity of the BharatPe board or individual board members is being questioned time and again through misrepresented facts and baseless allegations,” BharatPe said in the statement.