Cab-hailing app Ola has roped in one of the largest audit companies to investigate one of its senior Vice-Presidents for fraudulent practices that is estimated to be in millions of dollars.

According to media reports, the man under the scanner — Yugantar Saikia, Head of Human Resources and Chief Administrative Officer, who joined Ola in January 2015 — was guilty of receiving payoffs running into a few crore of rupees for recruiting approximately 1,000 new hires. Saikia had already resigned from the company and was serving his notice period when the company seized his laptop and asked him to stop reporting to work. “This development will uncover the truth around these recruitments and people who may have been wrongly hired will have to be let go off,” said Harish HV, Partner at Grant Thornton India. The top executive’s internal and external accomplices who facilitated these hires will also have to be identified and removed from the system, added Harish.

Ola has been hiring at a brisk pace over the last two years to keep up with its pan-India expansion and currently has a headcount of 6,000 employees. The company which raised $1.1 billion last October, in a round led by Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd with participation from SoftBank and new US-based financial investors, has spread its wings to international markets with an entry into Australia last month.

On being contacted, an Ola spokesperson confirmed that an internal investigation was under way, but declined to share any further details.

The fraud was reported to have been going on for over 24 months and is said to have gone beyond just recruitment to other departments, including procurement, administration and IT. Asked whether this setback would erode Ola’s brand equity, brand consultant, Harish Bijoor said: “If an executive who is an employee of the company and is not one of its founders is being investigated for fraud, then Ola’s brand equity will be insulated from it and it will have no negative impact on the brand.”

Prior to joining Ola, Saikia was Senior Director – Asia Pacific Region at FICO, where he worked for nearly 11 years.