BlackRock whistle-blower sues over firing, shutdown of China monitoring tool
- Hamdan Azhar said he was fired after being forced to shut down search engine that monitored client discussions on illegal investments, including in China
- Azhar’s lawsuit in a Manhattan court seeks US$20 million. A BlackRock spokesman called Azhar’s accusations ‘completely meritless’
BlackRock was sued for US$20 million by a whistle-blowing former vice-president who said it fired him after he objected to a colleague’s self-dealing, and was forced to shut down a search engine for monitoring client discussions about illegal investments including in China.
In a complaint on Saturday, Hamdan Azhar said the big asset manager ordered him in March 2022 to stop work on Trend Spotter, which he had developed, and transfer his projects to Rightpoint, where the husband of former boss Tiffany Perkins-Munn worked.
He also said his new boss Riaz Hakkim refused to escalate concerns about client discussions that Trend Spotter could have tracked, and whether its revelations aligned with BlackRock’s public disclosures to investors and regulators.
Azhar said he began developing Trend Spotter in March 2021 as a “hackathon” project, and that it received “widespread attention and acclaim” within BlackRock.
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The New York-based company ended in March with US$10.5 trillion of assets under management.
