Industrial Court rules ex-officer’s termination justified

PETALING JAYA: A former officer in an insurance firm failed to win back his job as the Industrial Court ruled that he was justly terminated over accusations of being a sexual predator.

Chairman Yong Soon Ching denied Syed Naharudin Syed Hashim, 52, his claim for constructive dismissal from his job at Etiqa Takaful Bhd and agreed with the company’s decision to do so on grounds of its reputation being damaged by his behaviour.

The issue started when Etiqa received an anonymous e-mail on July 2, 2016, that two of its officers were sexual predators targeting girls as young as 13 years old with Syed Naharudin being caught on video by The Star’s R.AGE journalist as part of an exposé.

The company interviewed him twice, where he voluntarily admitted to being the person on the video recording identified as K-Boy, communicating with The Star journalist for two weeks under the assumption she was a 15-year-old student before meeting her twice at a hotel.

The court disagreed with the claimant that the video amounted to entrapment by the then 27-yearold journalist as evidence by an agent provocateur is admissible under Section 22 of the Sexual Offences Against Children Act 2017.

It acknowledged this case of sexual grooming as Syed Naharudin’s sexually explicit conversations about past exploits with underage girls was meant to manipulate her into trusting him and luring her to his hotel room.

“The conversations were explicitly related to sex and the sexual exploits, which a man of his age has no business to discuss with a young lady, not withstanding her real age,” said Yong in an award made available to The Star yesterday.

R.AGE’s videos were played during the court hearing and their authenticity was not challenged and the reporter was not called to testify.

Syed Naharudin was dismissed on Oct 21, 2016, and in the letter of dismissal, Etiqa said his actions and statements in the video exposé was extremely prejudicial to the company’s reputation, especially due to his high ranking position.

At that time, he had worked for the company for 21 years and held the position of Etiqa Agency Management (Family Takaful Agency) head which comes with a RM10,667 monthly salary.

In upholding the dismissal, the court ruled that his actions were tantamount to sexual grooming, the whole episode reeked of immoral and unethical activity and would damage the company’s reputation.

Syed Naharudin was represented by Messrs Ibrahim Hashim and Associates while Etiqa Takaful was represented by Messrs Steven Thiru and Sudhar Partnership.

Lawyer Muhammad Zarqali Mohd Noor who was on the Etiqa Takaful team said no appeal was received from Syed Naharudin’s counsel though he has up to three months from the date of the award to do so.