Man sacked over £60k expenses claim wins tribunal
A TOP sales executive sacked by an Ashby-based engineering firm over a £60,000 expenses claim has won his unfair dismissal case.
Paolo Porchetti, who earned £110,000 a year at Brush UK – formerly called Brush Electrical Machines – will not, however, receive any compensation.
An employment tribunal held in Nottingham heard that his “poor performance, absenteeism and woeful time-keeping” as sales director for the Asia Pacific region led bosses to offer him a generous settlement package to get him to leave the company.
But Mr Porchetti, who is from Italy and joined the company in 2015, then responded by putting in a giant expenses claim, reports the Mailonline.
It resulted in the firm, which relocated from Loughborough to Ashby last year, withdrawing its offer and instead choosing to sack him.
The tribunal was told the high-flying Porchetti – who also returned a company car that required extensive repairs and a broken laptop computer – was often absent from work for no good reason and was regularly late getting back to clients and to meetings and appointments.
His bosses were left shocked and affronted by his expenses claim, which involved three years’ worth of receipts stored in a shoebox.
The hearing was told, according to the Mail, that senior management had become increasingly frustrated by Porchetti’s poor work – regularly scoring only 30 per cent on performance management scores.
That was despite investing heavily in their employee – relocating him to the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpar, and having given him a £20,000 signing-on bonus, flights back to the UK and a generous accommodation allowance.
Mr Porchetti, according to the Mail, regularly visited Hong Kong, where his partner was living and he was studying towards a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree, even though work-related business was limited there.
He was 45 minutes late to the meeting where he was offered the settlement deal – and admitted not revealing the massive expenses he had accrued for fear it would threaten Brush’s offer.
The sales executive’s expense claim ended up amounting to £59,252.43, said the Mail, with some of his receipts dating back as far as 2016.
Employment Judge Victoria Butler, despite sympathising with the company’s position, ruled he was dismissed unfairly because Brush did not follow the correct procedures for sacking him.
The Mail reported that Mr Porchetti, who also lost a separate claim of race discrimination, will not receive compensation from the firm, as the court said his behaviour had contributed to his dismissal.
Brush will, instead, only have to pay him two week’s wages dating from July 2019.