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The chair of data forensics software company Nuix, Jeffrey Bleich, has come out saying it was “genuinely disturbed” by allegations concerning its former CFO, Stephen Doyle, as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) digs further into its investigation.
“We are genuinely disturbed by the allegations concerning Mr Doyle and will fully assist ASIC in getting to the bottom of that matter," Bleich said.
ASIC’s Financial Reporting and Audit Enforcement Team (FRAET) has commenced a separate investigation into the affairs of Nuix, specifically suspecting contraventions of sections 296, 344 and 1308 of the Corporations Act in relation to the software company’s financial statements for the periods ending 30 June 2018, 2019 and 2020 lodged with ASIC.
These sit alongside contraventions of sections 1308 and 1309 of the Corporations Act, in relation to the Initial Public Offering Prospectus lodged with ASIC and the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
The software company said it was fully committed to cooperating with the investigation but was “not aware of the precise nature of the investigation beyond the information outlined above and has not received any formal notification from ASIC in relation to any such investigation”.
On 24 June, a search warrant was executed at its Sydney office with authorities seeking documents in relation to an investigation into the affairs of an unnamed "individual”.
The ASX-listed software vendor stressed to shareholders that the warrant, as far as the company understood, did not relate to any allegation of wrongdoing by Nuix itself.
In the days leading up to the office search, both CEO Rod Vawdrey and Doyle resigned amid allegations concerning its $1.8 billion public listing.
Besides looking into Nuix’s finances in the years leading up to its initial public offering (IPO) in 2020, the investigation is also checking whether Nuix’s primary backer Macquarie Group overstated the company's sales forecasts ahead of its listing.
The Australian Federal Police is also investigating possible breaches of the Corporations Act involving Nuix co-founder Anthony Castagna.
Castagna resigned from Nuix's board last November and recently had a consultancy agreement terminated by the company.
Nuix, which is 76 per cent-owned by Macquarie, is facing questions over Castagna’s $3000 options package which delivered him an $80 million windfall when the company went public.
In 2019, Castagna successfully appealed convictions of tax evasion and money laundering, for which he was sentenced to seven years’ prison the year before.
According to reports at the time, the former chairman used a complicated scheme to avoid paying tax on his income while he was a technology consultant for Macquarie Bank.
A jury found that Castagna had failed to correctly declare $5.7 million of income and bonuses.
