Joonko, an Israeli startup that offered a human resources service that aids firms in reaching their diversity recruiting quotas, has finally gone bust. The firm which reportedly raised as much as $0 million filed for bankruptcy in Delaware after a year of turmoil.
It will not be so difficult to dismantle what is left of Joonko considering that the company already let go of all of its employees. Ilon Band, who took over as company CEO after the company founder was ousted has the responsibility of handling the firm’s closure.
It has been almost a year since Ilit Raz, the CEO and founder of Joonko was forced to leave the firm under a cloud of fraud allegations. A number of other executives were also forced out at the company over what the Joonko board alleged was “egregious, unethical and fraudulent conduct” that it maintains “caused harm to the company and its shareholders.”
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“The company was recently made aware of misstatements in the financial reporting of the company. Specifically, the board and other executive officers of the company lost confidence in the CEO’s ability to deliver on repeated requests to develop and support an internal finance function as part of the maturation of the company and its business,” Joonko’s board said in a statement at the time.
Ilit Raz allegedly deliberately inflated Joonko’s number of customers saying that they were 150, when, in fact, the actual number was a fraction of that. In doing so, she may have committed an act of fraud when raising money for the firm.
“The CEO was found to have engaged in egregious, unethical, and fraudulent conduct, which caused harm to the company and its shareholders. The CEO was confronted with the findings of the investigation, and she voluntarily resigned in response,” said Joonko’s board.
In January, Ilit Raz sued her former film for $300,000 to cover her legal expenses. Raz filed the law suit in a Delaware court claiming that Joonko failed to pay her legal fees as it was required to do. Band had written to Raz saying, “Given the circumstances, we do not believe that under the terms of the indemnification agreement the company is obligated to pay the invoices you forwarded.”