The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing
(DFEH) launched a lawsuit against Activision last summer, alleging the company
condoned a culture of sexual harassment, a toxic work environment, and
inequality.
Court documents seen Thursday by AFP show the DFEH asked in
late January to have access to any complaint against or investigation into 19
Activision employees, including CEO Bobby Kotick.
The agency also requested access to any police files
regarding complaints filed at Activision's BlizzCon conventions from 2015
through 2019, as well as at the offices of its subsidiary Blizzard, in the city
Irvine, and Activision in Santa Monica since June 20, 2021.
The new requests come weeks after Microsoft announced it
intended to buy Activision Blizzard, creator of Call of Duty and Candy Crush,
for $68.7 billion.
The documents do not directly name the individuals the DFEH
has requested information about, but they do say the Activision chief executive
and the former chief executive of Blizzard Entertainment are on the list.
The DFEH requests serve "no legitimate purpose,"
an Activision spokesperson said, noting they contain "sensitive,
confidential information with no limits or relative scope."
Instead, the spokesperson said, they are "another
questionable tactic in DFEH's broader effort to derail" Activision's
settlement with a federal agency, the US Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC).
This agency had negotiated with Activision to create an $18
million compensation fund for harassment victims.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the US markets agency,
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has also expanded its own
investigation into Activision. The probe was launched in September to determine
whether the company had adequately disclosed its harassment and discrimination
complaints.
The SEC recently requested documents related to a
significantly expanded list of current and former executives, going back
further than the initial request, the Journal reported. -Reuters
0 comments:
Post a Comment