Activist investor Boatman Capital has added to the troubles faced by Home Reit (HOME ) by questioning the independence of the auditor called in after accusations that the troubled property investor had been inflating valuations and failing to collect rents.

Home Reit, the £301m trust that provides accommodation to the homeless, saw its shares suspended last week over a failure to publish revised annual results following a shorting attack by Viceroy Research two months ago. The failure put it in breach of stock market rules.

Following Viceroy’s allegation that the trust inflated property values and was owed overdue rents, which Home denies, the trust was forced to redo its accounts and ordered auditor BDO to complete a deep-dive into its books. However, this has caused fresh concern as Boatman is now challenging the independence of the audit process.

The fact that Home Reit finance boss James Snape was previously part of the BDO real estate audit team has been flagged, leading Boatman to question how the audit would be undertaken ‘independently, without favour or undue influence’ in a letter to the trust.

‘We think it is reasonable for investors to ask for assurances that there will be appropriate professional distance and rigour between BDO as auditor and one of its ex-employees,’ said Boatman.

This letter follows one last month in which Boatman rounded on the board, calling for the trust’s chair and another senior director to resign as their positions were ‘untenable’ in the wake of Viceroy’s claims of property flipping and the financial weakness of its tenants. Boatman, which has in the past waged battles against the likes of defence contractor Babcock (BAB) and auditor PwC, has said it believes the property portfolio could be ‘significantly inflated’ by 39-51%.

The strength of Home’s tenants has also been under scrutiny and the trust has admitted that property developers made payments to housing associations tenants to support rent payments while they waited for occupants to take rooms.

Boatman said the arrangement was a form of revenue ‘round-tripping’ and it encouraged BDO to ‘establish the scale of these incentive payments to tenants’.

One tenant Home Reit is struggling with is Noble Tree Foundation, which, according to The Times, is withholding £860,000 of rent, claiming the trust failed to deliver promised refurbishment to its properties.

It has already held back £661,536 due for rent in September, October, and November, and plans to withhold another £202,000 due for December. This support Viceroy’s allegation that the Reit is owed rents by tenants, although Home said this was not the case when it rebutted the short-seller’s claims.

Before the suspension, shares in Home Reit have plunged by more than half since November when Viceroy started its short-selling attack. It has led to Home’s investment manager Alvarium selling off the division responsible for managing the trust ahead of its public listing on New York’s Nasdaq stock exchange as part of a merger with Cartesian Growth Corporation and Tiedemann Group.

The arm that manages Home Reit was sold for £24m to a newly-formed entity owned by the management team of Alvarium Home Reit advisers.