I have a situation regarding an ex-employee who we agreed a

No. We discovered issues in mid September but didn’t know how much he was involved so had two informal meetings with him to ask him about his involvement and awareness of the Issues. He denied knowledge so we gave him the benefit out of the doubt but kept investigating. Over the following 6 weeks we found increasing amounts of evidence and have been trying to recover all his deleted emails.

I’m not paying 48 quid to speak to you mate. I need some basic advise which I believed you could provide through this service. There was never a mention of further charges.

However if you can guarantee me a complete and full answer to my question I will pay you the money. I cannot call from this phone though as I am currently working in Mumbai and calls cost £1.50 per minute. Are you able to talk on what’s app?

Ahhh okay. Brilliant. Already been fleeced to the point of bankruptcy. Really just looking for some help

Hey Ben. Okay... the employee in question choose voluntary redundancy at the end of June and we agreed that he would work until the end of September. On September the 17th the director he was working directly under deleted 27,000 emails. We found this to be suspicious so worked to recover those emails. Once recovered we found evidence of various acts of illegal activity including fraud and multiple cases of diversion of business to another company which the employee had part time work with.

The employee was clearly complicit in many of these acts so we froze everyone’s emails in order to prevent anything else from being deleted. We then held too informal meetings with the employee asking him of his knowledge about some of the events that had taken place just before the end of his employment term. He claimed to have no knowledge of the matters although admitted to setting up a company, and being the director of the company through which some business and money had been rediverted through, however, he claimed it was without his knowledge and the director he had worked so closely under (who is also his best mate) must have been responsible. We gave him the benefit of the doubt but told him we would be withholding his redundancy until further investigations had taken place and he could exonerated. Since that time (after his employment term finished) we have found him to be complicit and involved in a huge number of acts of gross misconduct that have been extremely detrimental to the business. We are still investigating the case and collating more evidence and have just recovered over 1/2 million emails going back to 2015 which is when we believe the first crimes and acts of gross misconduct were committed.

We have been in talks with the police, legal advisors and liquidators and at this very moment are trying to discover the full extent of the crimes and acts of gross misconduct.

The employee has now threatened us with an employment tribunal for his unpaid redundancy and even talking about claiming unfair dismissal which is just sickening. We have never said we will not pay his redundancy but stated that

1. The company is not in a financial position at this time due to the criminal activities have taken place. This is true, we are practically involvement.
2. That he would be paid once money had been recovered and if he was found to not be guilty… which now, especially over the last few days we 100% know him to be

He is still unaware of the scale of evidence we have against him as we do not want him to make the director aware of what we know and who will most certainly be facing civil and criminal proceedings and will very likely immediately transfer all his assets as soon as he knows how much trouble he is in.

What I really want to know is if this did go to an employment tribunal would these circumstances be taken into account?.

The concept of paying an employee redundancy who has assisted in the diversion of so much money, has completely abused our trust and broken so many terms of his employment contract seems more than unjust. He would have instantly been dismissed had we discovered this evidence earlier.

Is there a procedure we could follow now?. We were thinking that we could arrange a meeting with him and present him with a selection of the evidence which if any fair or sane person were to see would clearly show him to be guilty and that then he may drop his charade.

I hope that explains the situation well enough for you to be able to advice accordingly.

I would be more than happy to stand in court as long as our side can be heard. You would hope that any tribunal would see that due to the historical acts of gross misconduct it is only right his redundancy be withheld, at least until the point that the investigation is finished, despite the already existing evidence.

I did find this article and am hoping the same would apply
https://www.crosslandsolicitors.com/site/crossland_news/williams_leeds_gross_misconduct_2015_html

I look forward to your reply

Hey Ben... sorry been in the mountains over the weekend so had no internet. Okay so my last question... does the process of an employment tribunal over the withholding of redundancy allow for evidence to be heard or presented from the employer as to why redundancy has been held?

yeah thats great... thanks Ben... appreciate your time x