Updated: RadiumOne fires its CEO following domestic abuse charges

RadiumOne, a marketing automation company, has terminated its CEO, Gurbaksh Chahal, following an ugly and very public controversy.

Chahal, who was reportedly caught on security cameras beating his girlfriend last summer, pled guilty to domestic violence and battery misdemeanor charges earlier this month.

On Twitter, however Chahal claimed his innocence and called the matter a year-long “political witch hunt.”

As the controversy spread around the Internet and reporters and bloggers opined on and investigated the charges, RadiumOne came under increasing pressure from the public to fire Chahal. And as of last night, that’s exactly what has happened.

[Update: Chahal has written his own post denying that he hit his girlfriend 117 times, as alleged in various stories. He also responded to his firing.]

Here’s the full statement from RadiumOne:

At a board meeting yesterday evening, RadiumOne’s board of directors voted to terminate the employment of Gurbaksh Chahal as CEO and Chairman of the company. Bill Lonergan, the company COO, will take over as CEO of the Company immediately. Bill has an extraordinary professional background and has helped build Blue Lithium and RadiumOne into industry leading brands. We are confident he will continue Radium One’s impressive trajectory.

RadiumOne builds software that automates media buying, making big data actionable for digital marketers.

RadiumOne uses programmatic advertising to connect brands to their next customers by incorporating valuable first-party data about behaviors, actions and interests demonstrated by consumers across web and mobile touch points.

Based in San Francisco, RadiumOne has offices across the US, Canada, Europe and Australia.