Yes, Srila Prabhupada "conducted initiations by using proxies", priests, starting around 1970. Many devotees in Europe were initiated for example by Revatinandana swami chanting on their beads in England.

Of course the Gaudiya Matha criticized this process at the time and they still do.
And there're lots of ISKCONites even on this forum who also say, "Srila Prabhupada is not preaching according to sastra because proxies is a deviation".

Yes, by now lots of people seem to know sastra better than the acaryas. And the end result of their system is: inefficient leaders were/are being worshipped as world acaryas.

Mainly these rubber stamped gurus produced one thing, splitting ISKCON into many inefficient mini missions, although saying, we're still one ISKCON.

"Judge a thing by its result". If ISKCON would have remained unified and not splitted up into many different mini camps there would not have been such a mass exodus.

Instead of an efficient global network for spreading Krishna's Holy Name and other important spiritual projects ordered by Prabhupada, what do we have now, a constant withdrawing from the actual front-line to fight kali-yuga in NA and EU.

The power of an efficient global network gone. People even fighting over properties.