Who is Dan Price, the CEO who is being forced to resign?

Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, has resigned.

He’s a figure familiar to many in the business world and further afield, and the practices of his company have made headlines over recent years.

"My No. 1 priority is for our employees to work for the best company in the world, but my presence has become a distraction here," he said in a resignation post he shared to Twitter.

"I also need to step aside from these duties to focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me. I'm not going anywhere."

But who is he? And why has he been forced to resign?

Here’s everything you need to know.

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Who is Dan Price?

Price has been accused of trying to forcibly kiss a woman and was indirectly accused of being abusive toward an ex-wife. He has denied both of those allegations.

Prosecutors charged him with misdemeanour assault and reckless driving, and the case is ongoing, he says he is resigning in order to focus on legal proceedings.

Price became known to the wider public after news outlets picked up on his decision to cut his own salary to pay employees to approximately $70,000.

He was targeted in the right-wing media as a result, and labelled a socialist.

"I'm so happy how people's lives are changing, because they deserve it, and they deserve every penny of it," Mr Price said in 2016. "For me to make the sacrifice in the short term, I'd rather this than a vacation home in Palm Springs or the Hamptons. I guarantee that this will pay off."

He has faced criticism and allegations before now.

He was sued by his brother Lucas in 2015, who claimed the CEO had been overpaying himself and mismanaging the company. Ultimately a judge ruled that Lucas Price's rights as a minority shareholder had not been violated.

His ex-wife, Kristie Colon, also indirectly accused him of beating and waterboarding her during a 2015 TEDx talk. She did not name Mr Price during that speech. Mr Price told Bloomberg, which originally reported the claims, that the events Ms Colon described "never happened."