The top City firm ‘awash with racist and sexist jokes’
Broker’s £1.5m claim over harassment
RACIST and sexist jokes were common currency at a top City brokers, a tribunal has been told. Department head Neil Campbell – who can earn more than £500,000 a year – is accused of receiving a string of derogatory jokes about black people, women, the French and even the Dutch, and displaying no concern at the content.
He is also said to have suggested badminton-playing colleagues were gay, and performed comedy Pakistani accents.
He is claimed to have been similarly abusive towards his firm’s wealthy clients, saying almost all private equity investors were ‘imbeciles and idiots’.
According to Kishore Kansal, 33, who is claiming £1.5million for racial harassment and discrimination and unfair dismissal, staff at London firm Tullett Prebon stuck a picture of a terrorist next to the desk of Hindu employee Maulik Patel, claiming he resembled him.
Head of private equity Mr Kansal said ethnic minority staff were given nicknames, with Mr Campbell calling him ‘brown boy’ and routinely branding Pakistani broker Ghatan Vahidy ‘the terrorist’.
Mr Kansal, who earned £130,000 a year and is British born of Indian descent, described Mr Campbell as a ‘racist fool’.
The case against Tullett Prebon, where staff were said to be ’99.9 per cent white middle-aged male’, also claims Mr Campbell described the people of the Middle East as ‘mad’. Mr Kansal told the London employment tribunal he was victimised when he refused to join racist and sexist banter.
His barrister produced a series of ‘offensive’ emailed jokes received by Mr Campbell, who headed the alternative investments desk.
Mr Kansal said the jokes were indicative of a wider racist atmosphere. When he put in a grievance against Mr Campbell last year, he said he was forced to take sick leave and was then unfairly sacked.
Describing Mr Campbell’s alleged racist mocking of Mr Vahidy, he said: ‘Neil Campbell stood up with a large grin on his face and said “You speak like this”, and then proceeded to do an impression of a Pakistani accent, saying ‘ bud-li, bud-li, bud-li.’
Mr Kansal said he was ‘surprised by how the others in the office took this behaviour – often laughing and even contributing to the jokes’.
He claimed that among the 800 staff on his floor there were no black people, only a handful of Asians and ‘hardly any women’. He said one female colleague, Kim Sullivan, was openly described as ‘useless’ aside from her good looks. But Mr Kansal himself admitted email- ing colleagues a clip from the comedy film Team America of a midget puppet depicting North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, after he had been on a conference call with a south east Asian client who had a ‘very funny accent’.
Mr Campbell denied he was a racist, sexist homophobe. He added Mr Vahidy ‘would often refer to himself as “the terrorist”, and say ‘that when he was going on holiday he was going to a terror cell’. He also denied calling Mr Kansal ‘brown boy’. Tullett Prebon said it denied all allegations.
The case continues.