A City broker, who lied to his boss on several occasions, has lost a case for race discrimination, harassment and unfair dismissal, a media report said.
According to a report in the MailOnline, an employment tribunal hearing held in central London heard that Priyank Thakkar, who earned £60,000-a-year, took a Friday off to celebrate Diwali and went sick.
On the following Monday, the broker at City firm Gallardo Securities texted his boss saying that he was not coming in because he was too sick after a family party.
The report said that he even lied about needing an operation and took leave for another 11 days. Thakkar also missed work after failing to catch several flights back from trips abroad.
The tribunal also heard that he would occasionally wear trainers and a baseball cap to the office.
After missing 55 days’ work in just a year, Thakkar was suspended following a missed flight back from Amsterdam and then resigned a day later, The MailOnline report said.
Later, he sued the firm for race discrimination and unfair dismissal. He started working at Gallardo, an inter-dealer broker based in London, in 2017.
In 2018, his bosses began to have concerns about his unreliability and frequent unauthorised absences.
When asked about his change of behaviour in 2019, Thakkar explained he was suffering from PTSD due to an earthquake in his childhood triggered by the raised voices on the open trading floor, the panel heard.
He was then told to sit next to the CEO Giammarco Campolieti in August 2019 to improve his deteriorating performance.
The following month, he resigned without notice but he was convinced to stay, but his reliability and performance did not improve, the panel heard.
In September, he said he needs an operation for a sinus infection, but he never provided medical certificates. In January 2020, he took 11 days sickness absence for his ‘operation’.
However, he admitted to the tribunal he had invented the procedure as ‘an excuse to get away from all the bullying and harassment at work’.
The panel headed by employment judge Frances Spencer dismissed his claims after it found his credibility was ‘severely damaged’ for numerous reasons, including the fact that he had lied to his bosses.
“He admitted in evidence that he had lied to his employers when he told them that he was off work because he was having an operation and appeared to think it entirely acceptable to have done so. [His] explanation for his failure to provide sick certificates was also unconvincing,” the panel ruled.
“He said that his absences, lateness and changes in attitude and performance were due to his deteriorating ‘mental health’ caused by the [company], but no medical evidence of any deteriorating mental health was provided.”
