BlackRock whistleblower alleges search engine cover-up to uncover Chinese investments. By Reuters
Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) – BlackRock is being sued for $20 million by a former vice president who whistle-blowed that the asset manager fired him after it shut down a search engine that allowed it to monitor customer discussions of illegal investments, including those in China.
Hamdan Azhar said in his Saturday complaint that BlackRock ordered him to stop working on Trend Spotter, which he developed, in March 2022 and transfer the project to Rightpoint, where the husband of his former boss, Tiffany Perkins-Munn, worked.
The Brooklyn resident said he persistently opposed the $2 million contract that BlackRock awarded to Rightpoint before Perkins resigned, calling it “illegal self-dealing” and being fired two months later.
He also said his new boss, Riaz Hakkim, refused to expand on concerns about illegal investments that Trend Spotter had been able to track and whether the revelations were consistent with BlackRock’s public disclosures to investors and regulators.
Azhar began developing Trend Spotter as a “hackathon” project in March 2021 and said it “gained widespread interest within BlackRock.” The New York-based company ended March with $10.5 trillion in assets under management.
BlackRock had no immediate comment Monday.
Last summer, a bipartisan House Select Committee on the Communist Party of China began seeking information about whether BlackRock and index provider MSCI facilitated investments in blacklisted Chinese companies.
In April, the committee found that Wall Street had invested $6.5 billion in 2023 through index fund investments into 63 Chinese companies that the U.S. government has accused of supporting China’s military or human rights abuses.
BlackRock and MSCI deny wrongdoing and say they comply with U.S. law.
Azhar said he joined BlackRock in February 2020 as head of data science for global marketing.
His lawsuit, filed in New York state court in Manhattan, seeks $10 million each in compensatory and punitive damages for violations of state labor laws.
Perkins-Munn and Hakkim are also defendants and currently work for JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:) and Fidelity Investments, respectively, according to the complaint.
Neither company immediately responded to requests for comment. Azhar’s attorney did not immediately respond to a similar request.
The case is Azhar v BlackRock Inc (NYSE:) et al., Supreme Court, New York County, New York.
