-By ArdorComm News Network
May 10, 2022
Following a corporate governance review, BharatPe’s board of directors recommended several actions, including terminating some employees and vendors and initiating criminal charges against them for misconduct.
BharatPe, which lets shop owners to make digital payments through QR codes and is planning an IPO, launched a corporate governance review in January to assuage investor concerns amid a public conflict regarding one of its co-founders’ personal investments.
The company, which competes in India’s booming payments market with apps like SoftBank’s Paytm and Google Pay, came under intense investor and media scrutiny after co-founder Ashneer Grover sought damages from Uday Kotak, the head of Kotak Mahindra Bank, alleging that the bank denied him financing for a personal investment.
According to Reuters, the audit will determine whether BharatPe’s senior officials are making sufficient internal disclosures regarding personal investments and will look for conflicts, resulting to the creation of a new code of conduct.
The board of BharatPe has recommended various decisive steps that are being implemented after a careful examination of a report to find deliberate misconduct and gross negligence by a former founder during the last two months, the firm said in a statement.
BharatPe said it was implementing a new vendor procurement policy to reduce the danger of staff engaging in suspicious activities to profit themselves, and that numerous individuals in departments who were directly associated with blacklisted vendors had their jobs terminated.
“Many vendors involved in malpractices, such as incorrect or inflated invoices, have been blocked for further business with the company… the company has already issued legal notices to these vendors to recover the amount and will be filing civil or criminal cases against them in the coming days,” BharatPe added.