A massive UK PR firm was expelled from a trade body for “inciting racial hatred” in South Africa.

Bell Pottinger’s second-largest shareholder walked away from the business by writing off its investment and handing back the stake to the struggling PR firm.

The firm was sanctioned last week and given a week to appeal, which failed to change the final decision.

Reports say the firm breached the industry’s ethical standards when it ran a campaign that shifted focus on racial inequality in South Africa.

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The South African authority imposed on the firm the harshest sentence ever, this makes Bell Pottinger unable to re-apply for membership for five years.

Hours before the Bell Pottinger got expelled it’s chief executive James Henderson stepped down.

“Bell Pottinger has brought the PR and communications industry into disrepute with its actions, and it has received the harshest possible sanctions,” said the association’s director general Francis Ingram. The firm said it accepts the ruling, adding that staff members not involved in the matter may apply for individual membership, according to the BBC.

South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, laid a complaint with the association, which led to the industry investigation. Bell Pottinger walked away from the Oakbay account in July after protest from South Africans, citing online harassment  of their staff. The firm fired the executives behind the campaign and apologized, but it was roundly rejected by South African civil society, who believed the campaign had real power to stir discord in a country still struggling with its past.

For the year that Bell Pottinger worked for the Gupta’s company Oakbay Capital, they successfully introduced the phrase “white monopoly capital” into the popular discourse in South Africa.

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The communications firm will likely struggle to salvage its own reputation and has already lost clients over the Gupta scandal. Luxury goods company Richemont, founded by South African Johann Rupert, abandoned the firm along with investment bank Investec, also established in South Africa.

The firm'' other clients have included South Africa’s last apartheid-era president F. W. de Klerk, Syria’s first lady Asma al-Assad and Oscar Pistorius, during his murder trial. They’ve also worked with Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko and were instrumental in establishing the Pinochet Foundation to rehabiliate the image of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.