Contributed by: kellyseal on Friday, June 18 2021 @ 09:36 am
Last modified on Friday, June 18 2021 @ 09:37 am
A new motion was filed in the New York Supreme Court against Match Group and IAC for allegedly covering up a report of sexual misconduct to manipulate the valuation of dating app Tinder, according to a report by Bloomberg[*1] . Match Group is the parent company of Tinder, and at the time of the incident, was owned by IAC.
Lawyers for former Tinder co-founder and CEO Sean Rad and other Tinder employees who filed the lawsuit said that there are internal company documents that reveal IAC and Match Group executives discussed covering up sexual assault allegations against former Match Group CEO Greg Blatt, but that the companies are concealing them. They argue that IAC and Match Group intended to keep Blatt on board so he could lowball Tinder’s value, and therefore cheat Tinder employees out of billions in payment for their stock options.
The plaintiff’s lawyers called for IAC and Match Group to turn over “all notes, summaries and memoranda” related to the investigation of Blatt’s alleged misconduct. Bloomberg reported the filings included “newly unsealed emails and deposition testimony” that show company executives, including former IAC CEO Joey Levin and Chairman Barry Diller, setting up what they referred to as a “sham” inquiry into the assault allegation in order to keep Blatt in place “so that he could corrupt the 2017 valuation of which he was in charge.”
The new filings show the board had debated disclosing the allegations against Blatt and that he’d written a draft resignation letter, but ultimately they decided to make his eventual departure look planned. This was referred to in an email from Valerie Combs, IAC head of communications, to Levin, which read: “we need to get specific on the date of when the Board adopted a CEO transition plan, and it needs to pre-date the incident for the story to be credible should all of this come to light.”
Blatt resigned shortly after the Tinder valuation, though IAC executives said his departure was planned for months in advance and deny that he was asked to resign.
The original lawsuit was filed in 2018 by former Tinder CEO Sean Rad and a group of former Tinder employees, accusing Blatt of sexually assaulting Tinder employee Rosette Pambakian at the company’s 2016 holiday party. According to the lawsuit, when Rad reported the assault to a company lawyer, he was fired from his position.
IAC responded this week with their own motion. According to Bloomberg, the filing read: “the ‘scheme’ theory advanced by plaintiffs is purely conjectural and wholly void of proof.” The company also said that documents should remain sealed because they were “irrelevant” and would “prejudice” members of the jury.
Pambakian filed her own lawsuit against Blatt and Match Group in 2019, alleging she was fired for reporting the assault, and that the company tried to get her to sign a non-disclosure agreement in exchange for increased compensation, which she refused.
The case against IAC and Match Group is expected to go to trial in November.