DraftKings CEO: There Was ‘Absolutely No Wrongdoing’
After a scandal that accused an employee of insider-trading, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins says he is “completely committed to creating an open and transparent environment.”
During an exclusive interview on The FOX Business Network’s Morning’s with Maria, Robins said: “having the trust in customers that the game is fair is everything to us and we have done everything, I think, to investigate this incident and have clearly found, through evidence that we pulled, records of when data was sent to this employee, that there was absolutely no wrongdoing here.”
Robins said the company is committed to having an open discussion on how to create a better ‘‘trusting and open environment.” He added, “It’s just unfortunate to me that someone who is innocent had to be smeared in order to have that discussion.”
Robins continued to explain how the company’s internal investigation proved no wrongdoing by the employee.
“We have great records of when data is pulled, when communications are sent. So it was quite easy for us to go and pull those records and what we found was that he was sent this data after his lineup was locked on Fanduel -- so he had no ability to edit it. So it couldn’t possibly have been a situation where that data was useful to him in setting that lineup. We also have contracted a third party law firm that’s going to be conducting an independent investigation and as soon as we have a summary of those findings we will come and publicly share them.”
He admitted that his employee did in fact receive inside information but after he was no longer able to make changes to his lineup.
“The information that was send was definitely information that contained utilization on players that should not have been posted publically and that was an error -- a mistake that was made and he will certainly be hearing about that from us,” Robins said.
Robins said DraftKings and Fanduel had previously contracted a third party to audit procedures and prevent flaws in the system.
“We’re a young company, we’ve only been around three and half years and I think we’ve done a good job putting really strong policies and procedures in place but they can definitely get better… And there is going to be a lot of work that gets put behind this. I think it’s very important that everyone out there knows that there is the highest of integrity in our games and that players can trust that the competition is fair and we will work tirelessly until everyone out there is very clear that that is the case.”
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