Lawyer ‘put envelope on his head and told black secretary he was in KKK’
A SENIOR lawyer at a firm used by Sir Cliff Richard pulled a large white envelope over his head and told his black secretary he had joined the Ku Klux Klan, a disciplinary tribunal was told.
Samuel Charkham, 68, also slapped her bottom on 18 separate occasions over a three-year period, it was alleged.
The incidents were said to have happened at the media and commercial law firm Simkins
LLP in Bloomsbury, central London, where Mr Charkham was a partner.
The secretary – who cannot be named for legal reasons – told the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal the Ku Klux Klan incident happened in January 2017 when she was sitting at her keyboard about to take dictation from her other boss.
‘The respondent came running through the office with a white A4 envelope on his head laughing and saying he has joined the Ku Klux Klan,’ she said. ‘I was sort of shocked.
‘I said to my boss can you dictate the letter quickly so I can go outside and get myself together.’
She said the bottom slapping incidents happened frequently between 2014 and 2017, often in the office kitchen and after Mr Charkham had been drinking heavily.
Nimi Bruce, for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said Mr Charkham told a racist joke at a Christmas party in 2016.’ The secretary said she felt ‘ extremely uncomfortable’ as colleagues turned to look at her as the joke was told.
In December 2017 she signed an agreement which closed the matter and included confidentiality clauses.
Mr Charkham has left Simkins and was working for Portner Law Limited, in central London, at the time the allegations were announced by the SRA. He denies all of them.
Mr Charkham, who claims to have a ‘ playful sense of humour’, told the tribunal he was from another age, before the Black Lives Matter movement had begun.
He admitted the jokes were in bad taste.
Asked if he touched the secretary’s bottom he replied: ‘Absolutely not.’
Simkins acted for Sir Cliff in his landmark victory over the BBC in 2018, when the High Court ordered the corporation to pay damages of £210,000 for breaching the singer’s privacy by naming him as being under investigation for historical sexual assault and broadcasting a raid on his home.
The investigation was dropped without any charges being brought.
The hearing continues.