Gurbaksh Chahal threatens to sue board in open letter

Chahal opines in the letter: "What did I do to deserve this?"

Not content to be sidelined to the realm of plebeian anonymity, former RadiumOne CEO Gurbaksh Chahal has come out with yet another retelling of his side of the story, only this time it’s in the form of an open letter to RadiumOne’s board of directors, from which he resigned this week. Chahal also threatens legal retribution in the letter.

Just like his earlier blog post (since removed) in which he claims he didn’t beat his girlfriend—but even if he did, it was ALL HER FAULT because she was literally a prostitute—Chahal claims that his choice to take the plea deal was ALL the board’s fault.

“Given the timing of an IPO, you began suggesting that I should not try for full exoneration with a trial, since that could take a year or more and disrupt the timing and IPO process. One approach involved getting the case to a misdemeanor plea so that we could resolve the case and focus on the IPO,” wrote Chahal. “By April, after the first settlement conference and preliminary hearing, my legal team was able to get a misdemeanor plea that was satisfactory to both the RadiumOne board and the bankers. You were well aware that if I had gone to trial I would have gotten full exoneration.”

Which is actually probably true, since Chahal’s team was able to get the video evidence of the beating thrown out of court on a technicality (the home security video was illegally seized, even though the prosecution argued that Chahal likely would have erased the tape if police had waited for a warrant). And Chahal’s girlfriend stopped cooperating with the investigation shortly after Chahal posted his $1 million bail and hired former federal prosecutor James Lassart (who is also defending state senator Leland Yee on corruption charges) as his attorney.

The DA has said definitively, though, that there is a tape showing Chahal striking and kicking his girlfriend 117 times in the span of 30 minutes.

So while Chahal may have seen full exoneration if he had gone to trial, he would not have slipped past the court of public opinion quite as easily as he thinks.

Interestingly, Chahal’s claim that he took the deal because the board talked him into it don’t exactly jibe with his earlier reasons for taking the plea deal. Previously, he said he took the deal because "after a lot of soul searching I believed I was acting in the best interest of my company, my employees, my customers, my family, my friends and my investors."

Chahal went on to opine (emphasis his own): “I was practically lynched on social media when the local press began covering the news. Everyone seemed fixated on the initial allegations made by the DA, which were false. The decision to accept the misdemeanor plea to end this case, instead of going to trial, was proving ineffective. This was the first wave of the social media lynching.”

(Everyone seemed fixated on these charges of violently beating a woman to within an inch of her life...pfft, what's up with that?)

Interesting thing about those allegations: even Chahal’s attorney couldn’t deny that Chahal had repeatedly struck his girlfriend, but insisted that the damage was overblown. Chahal, meanwhile, insists he never struck his girlfriend at all (but if he had, it was totally warranted, you guys—that whole “prostitution” thing and all).

Chahal’s letter insists several more times that the decision to take the plea deal was at the board’s insistence, and he was given the ol’ “cloak and dagger” by his treacherous colleagues. At one point, he asks: “And what did I do to deserve this?”

What…did I do…to deserve this…

“I sincerely hope you wake up from this greed, betrayal, and dishonesty,” he writes. “You have left me with no other options but to seek legal recourse. And, now will have to face severe legal consequences individually for this in the court of law.”

He will prepare for the court battle by getting totally swole and then getting his chest waxed.