Startup Linked to David Cameron Ousts CEO on Sex Assault Claims

(Bloomberg) -- 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 U.S. admiral, A-List chief executives, and three former heads of government, including former U.K. 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 move came two days after a 23-year-old former employee testified before a U.S. congressional committee investigating arbitration clauses that companies write into contracts, and the chilling effect they can have on victims of harassment and other crimes. 

Tatiana Spottiswoode, a former employee, said the 50-year-old Chishti sexually assaulted her during a business trip to Brazil. 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 -- a detail that was confirmed to Bloomberg by two former employees of Afiniti. 

“The Board of Directors of Afiniti announces that Mr. 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. In recent months, Chishti, a former Morgan Stanley banker, had insisted Afiniti deserved a valuation of at least $2 billion. 

But current and former Afiniti engineers say the software simply matches callers and agents via common variables, such as where they live, how much they earn, and the color of their skin. Afiniti counters that it never pairs users using ethnicity, race, gender, religion, or language, instead relying on “interaction history, product ownership, longevity of relationship and reason for contact.” 

Multiple sources inside the company say the Advisory Board, a group of business leaders with a formidable professional network, is the key to the success Afiniti has had in winning deals. Members have included former CEOs of Sony Group Corp., Aviva Plc, and Verizon Communications Inc., and Mike Mullen, the retired U.S. Navy admiral who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. And the company’s directors include a former U.S. Treasury secretary and the ex-premiers of Spain and Bermuda.

This board and its advisers formed a corporate members club where they discuss events of the day -- Cameron, for instance, held forth on Brexit for the group prior to joining the company, according to a person familiar with the discussions. 

Chishti has said that these grandees have all invested in Afiniti, and he has hinted they help Afiniti directly reach the decision makers of potential clients, once claiming that Cameron “would know every single chief in banking.” The company said the twin boards “are instrumental in our success as a business and we are proud of it.”

The board was aware of the claims made by Spottiswoode in 2018, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

Cameron, who joined Afiniti in May 2019, quit his role on Wednesday. Three more advisers are considering exiting the firm, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

Shares in TRG Pakistan, the Pakistan-listed holding company that owns a significant stake in Afiniti and is also led by Chishti, have fallen over 20% in the past three days.

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