BharatPe terminates head of controls Madhuri Jain Grover's services

Madhuri Jain Grover [Image: Instagram/madsj30]

Weeks after being sent on leave the services of Madhuri Jain Grover, head of controls of BharatPe and wife of founder Ashneer Grover, have been terminated by the company on allegations of misappropriation of funds, according to sources privy to the development.

"Her contract has been terminated. Reasons for termination are misappropriation of funds and authorisation of inflated bills, among other things," said one of the sources quoted above.

Another source told Moneycontrol that Jain was called for an interaction by BharatPe's lawyers on Saturday to clarify these allegations.

BharatePe has confirmed the development. “We can confirm that the services of Madhuri Jain Grover have been terminated in accordance with the terms of her employment agreement,” the company said in a statement. Jain did not immediately respond to queries by Moneycontrol.

However, according to a preliminary report by risk advisory firm Alvarez and Marsal which was conducted in January, inconsistencies were found in dealings with vendors. The report had flagged up payments to vendors and consultants that were non-existent.

The report stated that BharatPe claims to pay recruitment fees to hiring consultants for the employees they recruit for the company. Alvarez and Marsal could confirm that some of the employees, claimed to be hired through consultants, were brought on board.

However, the said employees later revealed that they had no interaction with any consultants in the process and had no knowledge of their existence.

In three instances of payments made to these consultants, the report finds that Madhuri Jain Grover herself received invoices for payments and forwarded them to the accounts team.

Further, these invoices were created by Shwetank Jain who is the brother of Madhuri Jain Grover. The vendors who received payments as recruitment expenses do not have any web pages or portals and the invoices provided by them too have similarities.

As per the report, even the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) had conducted a search operation at BharatPe's head office on October 21, 2021.

In response to payment remittance details sought by the DGGI, Deepak Jagdishram Gupta who happens to be the brother-in-law of Madhuri Jain Grover had said that the vendors on whom details are sought do not exist.

"We have come to know that our vendors, as informed by DGGI officers, do not exist or never operated the principal places of business," Gupta had told DGGI.

The report further said that a total expenditure of Rs 53.25 crore was made towards these 30 vendors that did not exist and the company incurred a loss of Rs 10.97 crore in these dealings.

On January 28 Moneycontrol had reported that Madhuri Jain Grover was sent on leave just a week after Grover announced his leave of absence.

While Jain did not respond to queries by Moneycontrol sent yesterday, in a Twitter thread she alleged she was treated like an "object" in this whole episode.

"Now you may indulge in your ‘drunken orgies’ without having to wait for me (righteous lady) to leave office. Slow clap," her tweet read.

https://twitter.com/madsj30/status/1496304356404371456