Flutterwave CEO, Olugbenga Agboola, finally speaks, avoids allegations

About a week after insider trading accusation, sexual harassment allegation and deceit in establishment of Flutterwave were made against him, Olugbenga Agboola has finally reacted.

Agboola denied some of the allegations against him in a letter written to the employees of Flutterwave, stating that some of his decisions were backed by the board, while he had been absolved from others, but failed to address some of the cogent allegations.

Ripples Nigeria understands that Agboola’s affairs, alongside some unnamed employees of Flutterwave, were investigated, but while the latter were found guilty and sacked, he wasn’t.

Key points from Agboola’s statement

Fictitious Greg allegation: An investigative report on African Weekly had reported that Agboola created a fictitious co-founder, who goes by the name “Greg” in a bid to gain more shares in the ownership structure of Flutterwave.

In his letter, Agboola snubbed the allegation, not addressing the fake individual whom he allegedly awarded 10% stake to, despite his co-founder and former Flutterwave CEO, Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, admitting that he was deceived by the current CEO.

“The allegations about how I started the company are untrue.” The former Access Bank employee simply said in the statement to employees.

Access Bank involvement in Flutterwave creation: He noted that his “former boss” was aware of his business, having helped to seal deals with “enterprise clients.”, but there’s more that Agboola swept under the carpet with that statement.

But he failed to address the accusation that he used Access Bank resources to favour Flutterwave during client meeting. In one of his leaked chat, he had admitted that he forgot to mask his identity by changing his voice while acting as Access Bank rep during one of such meeting.

Note that during the period he was acting as Access Bank rep, he had informed the public that he has resigned from the lender as of 2016, but one of the bank’s document leaked by the publication showed that Agboola was still working for the financial institution as of 2017/2018 – he ignored this allegation.

Insider trading allegations: In his response to the claim, Agboola was said to have benefited directly from the sale of Flutterwave shares by employees, having reportedly compelled them to sell to his investment vehicle.

It was also claimed by the report that he lured employees to sell their share at $3.50, against the actual market price of $20 the firm sold to venture capital, which oozes of insider trading.

While not stating if his investment firm was a beneficiary or not from shares sold by current and ex-employees, he said the latter had previously sold their shares to third party.

Agboola said the board approval for the sale of shares was obtained when needed, and all legal processes and procedures were followed, stating, “we work closely with our outside law firms to stay in compliance with all applicable regulations.”

Read also: FLUTTERWAVE: Iyinoluwa Aboyeji hints on probe against Olugbenga Agboola

Snubs fraudulent allegation: Agboola’s company was also linked to some fraudulent activities which was discovered by Access Bank during an audit amid its consolidation with Diamond Bank, but he didn’t comment on this in the email to employees.

Flutterwave had held on to about N221.10 million arising from a business-to-business (B2B) transaction with Access Bank. The funds was the bank’s compensation for the transaction which occurred between April 2016 to August 2018, but it wasn’t remitted to the lender, until the bank threatened to automatically debit it from the Fintech startup’s account.

A fraud was also carried out on Flutterwave’s payment system in Kenya, on its B2B transactions involving MPesa.

Agboola escapes sack, others didn’t: He stated to employees in the letter that the company has cleared him against any s3xual harassment claim, which hint that he might have been probed.

While Agboola was absolved of the s3xual harassment allegation, he said some other employees were terminated from work for being “inappropriate towards team members.”

But this begs the question, which relates to one of the enquiries Ripples Nigeria asked Flutterwave but was ignored. Why didn’t Agboola step aside to eliminate his influence as CEO and co-founder on the outcome of the firm’s investigation?

He was also accused of harassing former employee, now CEO of Credrails, Clara Wanjiku Odero. The ex-worker said Agboola refused to release her 40,000 shares as agreed following her employment – The CEO of Flutterwave also ignored this issue.

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