04:59 PM EDT, 06/28/2024 (MT Newswires) -- (Updates with comments from Raza Bokhari and more details about the dispute beginning in the fourth paragraph.)

FSD Pharma's ( HUGE ) former board chairman and chief executive owes more than $2.2 million, plus interest, to the company, after a federal court confirmed a November 2022 arbitration award.

Former FSD Pharma ( HUGE ) CEO Raza Bokhari was fired in July 2021, following an internal dispute over a prospective acquisition. Bokhari challenged the termination in US federal court in Pennsylvania as well as arbitration in Ontario, where FSD Pharma ( HUGE ) is based.

The damages award, confirmed by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, includes nearly $570,000 in proceeds from FSD Pharma ( HUGE ) class B stock sale, almost $329,000 paid to former US Senator Rick Santorum using company funds, and reimbursing $70,000 he paid for four personal flights.

"FSD Pharma ( HUGE ) hood-winked the US district court and secured an enforcement," Bokhari said in an email to MT Newswires late Friday afternoon. He already has filed appeals seeking to overturn the verdict in both the US and Canada, where he is now executive board chairman and CEO at Medicus Pharma, a Toronto-based medical device company working on a microneedle drug-delivery system.

FSD Pharma ( HUGE ) said Friday it will "pursue all means possible" to collect on the arbitration award while Bokhari said he is working to obtain a $2.7 million surety bond.

"It is unfortunate that the district court rushed an enforcement order," Bokhari told MT Newswires. "I'm confident that this flawed arbitral award will be set aside."

Shares of the company fell 3.3% in recent after-hours activity.

Price: 0.1567, Change: -0.01, Percent Change: -3.27