Pitango Venture Capital managing general partner Rami Beracha has resigned from the fund following allegations of sexual harassment. Last Wednesday, he suspended himself the fund after the screening of an investigative report on the Uvda television program, which presented evidence that he had sexually harassed employees and entrepreneurs, and had initiated surveillance of the complainants and journalists to whom the complaints were made.
In a Facebook post today, Beracha wrote, "I have informed my friends at Pitango, whom I have been together with for almost 20 years, that I want to part from the fund and leave it immediately. I made this decision with a heavy heart. I love Pitango… The last thing I want is for them to be harmed; they don't deserve it."
Beracha added in his post, "I want to shout that an injustice is being done to me, which I want to correct."
Beracha continues to deny that he forced himself on women, but he has suspended himself from the fund, and Pitango said in a statement that he was taking a break in order to clear his name.
According to the Uvda TV investigative documentary, Beracha hired a firm of private investigators to follow women he had harassed, most of them technology entrepreneurs who tried to raise money from Pitango, which was founded in 1993 by Chemi Peres and Rami Kalish. Various women journalists, including Sharon Shporer and Galei Tzahal (Army Radio) criminal affairs correspondent Hadas Steiff, and an entrepreneur who heard about Beracha's alleged misdeeds, were followed.
Pitango said last week, "We stress that no complaints or claims concerning insulting conduct by Rami towards women have ever reached us. Had we received such claims, they would have been dealt with with zero tolerance, in accordance with the law, in a determined, sharp and clear way."
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on March 20, 2018
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