WASHINGTON: Zia Chishti, Pakistani American CEO of Afiniti has fell in trouble after a former Afiniti employee, Tatiana Spottiswoode, said the 50-year-old Chishti sexually assaulted her during a business trip to Brazil.
The move came two days after a 23-year-old former employee Tatiana Spottiswoode, testified before a US congressional committee investigating arbitration clauses that companies write into contracts, and the chilling effect they can have on victims of harassment and other crimes.
After accusing the founder of attacking her, he filed for arbitration in order to silence any accusations, she said.
Spottiswoode, the daughter of an Afiniti co-founder, provided photographs of the alleged assault as part of her testimony, saying the encounter was so violent that a nurse who examined her at a hospital said she had signs of concussion. “My body was covered with scratches, cuts and contusions,” Spottiswoode testified.
“I had bruises around my neck that looked like I had been strangled, a large bump on my head, a black eye.”
Five former Afiniti employees say the testimony is illustrative of a culture of heavy drinking and drug use at Afiniti. Much of the partying took place during business trips to far-flung locales such as Dubai and Brazil where female employees in their early 20s were encouraged to socialize with senior executives, the people said, asking not to be named for fear of retaliation from Chishti.
Spottiswoode described a visit to Dubai in 2016, where she said Chishti groped her in front of co-workers and assaulted a colleague. She said Afiniti reached a settlement with the other young woman that barred her from discussing any details of the assault or any compensation.
Zia Chishti spent more than a decade building Afiniti, a company he said would revolutionize the way call centers operate.
Along the way, he assembled a star-studded roster of advisers such as a retired US admiral, A-List chief executives, and three former heads of government, including former UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
He hired a high-powered sales force that featured a member of the royal family and a great-grandson of Winston Churchill. And he signed up blue-chip customers such as Caesars Entertainment and Enel SpA.
On Thursday, that effort started to crumple after Afiniti’s board announced that Chishti would step down immediately.
“The Board of Directors of Afiniti announces that Zia Chishti has stepped down from his role as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Afiniti, effective immediately,” the company said in a statement. “The Board will make additional organizational announcements in the coming days.”
Spottiswoode said the arbitrator ruled that she had been sexually harassed and assaulted by Chishti, but that his lawyers had sought to get her to vacate the award. She testified the founder had offered to give her an unspecified sum she had been awarded and drop a legal claim Chishti had made against her father and pay him $1 million.
Chishti, a heli-skiing Pakistani–American who previously launched the Invisalign dental braces business that is now worth $47 billion, founded the company that would become Afiniti in 2006 as a call-center operator. Around 2017, it started to identify itself as an AI pioneer, saying its software could supercharge the efficiency of call centers by matching customers with agents most likely to solve their problem or make a sale.
Chishti’s pitch has attracted investors such as McKinsey & Co., Swiss asset manager GAM Holding AG, media scion Elisabeth Murdoch, and former BP Plc boss John Browne.
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Courtesy: Bloomberg
