Ammunition manufacturer Ammo has put two of its top executives, including chief strategy officer and dissident shareholder Steven Urvan, on administrative leave to investigate potential data theft.
Ammo said on Tuesday that Urvan and Susan Lokey “may have misappropriated the company’s data and digital assets and transmitted that data to a third party controlled by Mr. Urvan and with which Ms. Lokey is associated.”
Urvan serves as chief strategy officer at Ammo, where he also sits on the board and holds a 17.1% stake, making him the company’s biggest shareholder. Lokey acts as chief financial officer at the parent company of GunBroker.com, the online gun auction site Urvan sold to Ammo last year.
Ammo’s move against Urvan comes just one week after he revealed plans to replace the company’s entire board in a proxy contest. Urvan nominated himself and Lokey as part of a full seven-person slate, criticizing Ammo’s plan to unwind the GunBroker.com acquisition and saying he had a strategy to make the company more profitable.
On Tuesday, Ammo said the internal probe targeting Urvan and Lokey was launched “several weeks ago.” The proxy contest “may be, at least in part, an attempt by Mr. Urvan to thwart our investigation and driven by his desire to avoid accountability,” the company added.
Ammo shares were down 3% in morning trading Tuesday in New York.