Infibeam Avenues Ltd has fired SRBC & Co. LLP as a joint statutory auditor for sharing unpublished price-sensitive information, the internet services provider said on Monday.
The Ernst & Young affiliate shared several pieces of information with a third party and the personal email accounts of the audit team on multiple occasions, Infibeam said in a stock-exchange filing.
The parent of payment gateway company CCAvenue said it had alerted SRBC to the unauthorised sharing of information after receiving an anonymous tip. The auditor confirmed the tip following an internal investigation, Infibeam said.
The auditor’s investigation team confirmed there was no technical way to verify that there was no further sharing of the price-sensitive information sent to personal accounts and the third party, it added.
“Upon receipt of the investigation report from the auditor, the board of directors of the company had given sufficient opportunities to the auditor of being heard,” Infibeam said, adding that its board was not convinced by SRBC’s explanation. The company will retain the services of Shah & Taparia, its other auditor.
SRBC said in a statement that it had conducted a “comprehensive investigation” and that it was open to facing a probe. “We are confident of our position and are open to a third-party/regulatory inspection and will respond to the regulators, as required,” it said.
Infibeam had come under public scrutiny in September last year when its shares slumped more than 70% in a single day after a WhatsApp message claimed that it had given interest-free and unsecured loans to a unit that operated its e-commerce marketplace.
Over the following months, Infibeam agreed to sell the marketplace unit, a UAE-based arm and its business-to-business industrial goods aggregation platform Tradohub. It also scrapped a deal to acquire Snapdeal subsidiary Unicommerce.
