Two days after Shopclues co-founder Sandeep Aggarwal made personal and professional accusations against his wife and co-founder Radhika Aggarwal, the board of ShopClues has issued a statement criticising the former for engaging in personal vendetta on a public forum.
It said that it is proud of the fantastic progress made by ShopClues under the leadership of Radhika and Sanjay Sethi.
“Sandeep Has No Say in the Company”
“The company’s differentiated business model and capital efficient approach has enabled it to become a market leader and has grown 30 times under this management,” the board said in a statement.
It is very disappointing to see an ex-founder, who disassociated from the company for his criminal wrongdoings, is now engaged in a personal vendetta on a public forum.
The board said that the company will remain focused on working with Radhika and Sethi and will continue to scale the company. ShopClues also listed a series of events as proof that post his arrest, Sandeep had no say in the company.
Sandeep was arrested by FBI in California on 29 July 2013 for conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud. The following day, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against Sandeep for insider trading. He was released on bail that same day.
In October 2013, the company decided to make Sethi the CEO and bring Radhika on board while Sandeep resigned as the CEO and director of the company. He then became a consultant to ShopClues.
A consultancy agreement was signed the same month with the joint consent of the company and its key stakeholder. Besides other things, it was agreed that if Sandeep pled guilty or is convicted or found guilty for the alleged crimes, he will cease to be a consultant and will no longer have any operating role in ShopClues. He will have no right to be a board director or have any active ability to elect or remove any non-CEO board directors.
This was unanimously approved by the board and signed by Sandeep and the company.
ShopClues says that though the counsels at the time were wary of Sandeep’s manipulation of not disclosing his past actions to the company and its investors, they decided to rather focus on securing the company’s future.
One month later, Sandeep pled guilty to one count of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. Automatically, as per the agreement, Sandeep’s association with the company was terminated. He could no longer be a director on the board and neither could he have the ability to elect or remove any non-CEO board directors.
But despite signing such an agreement, the board says that Sandeep continued to try and affirm his position at least 2-3 times attempting to challenge the contract.
In his Facebook post, Sandeep claimed that Radhika fraudulently changed his voting rights in ShopClues. However, he made no mention of any agreement that he signed that revoked his rights in the functioning of ShopClues.
Sandeep Aggarwal has now also deleted two out of three of his posts, where he made pointed accusations against Radhika Aggarwal.
(The article was originally published on The News Minute.)
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