http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/803816--gta-woman-s-6m-suit-against-u-k-boss-tossed?bn=1
Cathal Kelly
Staff Reporter
A Canadian financier who accused her millionaire boss of hiring a hitman to kill her learned Monday that a London employment tribunal did not believe her story.
“We did not find the claimant a persuasive witness,” the tribunal said today in a written judgment, dismissing the $6 million suit brought by Jordan Wimmer.
Wimmer, 29, of Mississauga, rocked London’s financial district — the “City” — with her allegations last fall against hedge-fund boss Mark Lowe.
Lowe is a well-known figure in the English investment world, a famous roué with a French castle, a $200 million fortune and a taste for the pleasures money can buy. Wimmer turned that playboy image around, painting Lowe as a predator.
She accused him of a determined campaign of sexual harassment. Wimmer alleged that Lowe peppered her with suggestive emails, forced her to attend strip clubs for business meetings and made her work with prostitutes that he passed off as relatives. She also claimed he demanded sex.
As a result, Wimmer said, she’d become clinically anxious, bulimic and was no longer able to work at her $800,000-per-year position.
Bizarrely, Wimmer also suggested that Lowe had hired a Russian hitman to run her over in the street.
Throughout the hearing, Lowe denied the bulk of Wimmer’s claims. At worst, he suggested, he was guilty of poor taste.
The tribunal heard that Lowe forwarded a series of “dumb blond” jokes to Wimmer, who is blond.
One email, entitled “Who is your real friend?” read: “Put your dog and your girlfriend in the boot (trunk) of your car for an hour and then see who is happy to see you.”
Another showed a sign: “Men: No shirt, no service; Women: No shirt, free drinks”
“I thought they were funny. They weren’t brilliantly funny, but they amused me,” Lowe told the tribunal. “These are very mild by comparison to some of the jokes I receive from business associates that I don’t forward.”
Lowe, 59, called the most serious accusations “a mixture of exaggeration or half-truths which do not properly reflect what actually happened.”
Lowe suggested that his relationship with Wimmer soured after he demanded repayment of a $115,000 loan. Lowe also pointed out that in four years at Nomos, Wimmer had advanced rapidly into a senior, well-compensated position.
After nearly five months of consideration, the tribunal’s panel decided it believed Lowe’s story. Or rather, that it didn’t believe Wimmer’s.
“Her dramatic account is simply not corroborated by the overwhelming totality of the contemporaneous documents,” the judgment read, according to the Telegraph. “(T)he attempts made by the claimant (Wimmer) during the course of the hearing to corroborate her claims of sexual harassment … put bluntly, backfired.”
Cathal Kelly
Staff Reporter
A Canadian financier who accused her millionaire boss of hiring a hitman to kill her learned Monday that a London employment tribunal did not believe her story.
“We did not find the claimant a persuasive witness,” the tribunal said today in a written judgment, dismissing the $6 million suit brought by Jordan Wimmer.
Wimmer, 29, of Mississauga, rocked London’s financial district — the “City” — with her allegations last fall against hedge-fund boss Mark Lowe.
Lowe is a well-known figure in the English investment world, a famous roué with a French castle, a $200 million fortune and a taste for the pleasures money can buy. Wimmer turned that playboy image around, painting Lowe as a predator.
She accused him of a determined campaign of sexual harassment. Wimmer alleged that Lowe peppered her with suggestive emails, forced her to attend strip clubs for business meetings and made her work with prostitutes that he passed off as relatives. She also claimed he demanded sex.
As a result, Wimmer said, she’d become clinically anxious, bulimic and was no longer able to work at her $800,000-per-year position.
Bizarrely, Wimmer also suggested that Lowe had hired a Russian hitman to run her over in the street.
Throughout the hearing, Lowe denied the bulk of Wimmer’s claims. At worst, he suggested, he was guilty of poor taste.
The tribunal heard that Lowe forwarded a series of “dumb blond” jokes to Wimmer, who is blond.
One email, entitled “Who is your real friend?” read: “Put your dog and your girlfriend in the boot (trunk) of your car for an hour and then see who is happy to see you.”
Another showed a sign: “Men: No shirt, no service; Women: No shirt, free drinks”
“I thought they were funny. They weren’t brilliantly funny, but they amused me,” Lowe told the tribunal. “These are very mild by comparison to some of the jokes I receive from business associates that I don’t forward.”
Lowe, 59, called the most serious accusations “a mixture of exaggeration or half-truths which do not properly reflect what actually happened.”
Lowe suggested that his relationship with Wimmer soured after he demanded repayment of a $115,000 loan. Lowe also pointed out that in four years at Nomos, Wimmer had advanced rapidly into a senior, well-compensated position.
After nearly five months of consideration, the tribunal’s panel decided it believed Lowe’s story. Or rather, that it didn’t believe Wimmer’s.
“Her dramatic account is simply not corroborated by the overwhelming totality of the contemporaneous documents,” the judgment read, according to the Telegraph. “(T)he attempts made by the claimant (Wimmer) during the course of the hearing to corroborate her claims of sexual harassment … put bluntly, backfired.”
