Expelled member sues club over virus rule breach claim
A MAYFAIR club is being sued after expelling a member allegedly caught breaching Covid quarantine rules by a civil servant who helped to write them.
Gina Mok was thrown out of the Lansdowne Club last autumn after Phoebe Topping, a Department of Health (DOH) official and fellow mem- ber, found she attended a meeting of the club council after visiting Bulgaria.
Ms Topping is the head of International Certification at the DOH and responsible for drawing up and implementing policy on vaccine certificates for travel.
Ms Mok, who was unvaccinated, claimed to be unaware that the rules had changed. She looked up the regulations and believed she was exempt for medical reasons.
She returned to the club the next day, further angering Ms Topping who allegedly urged her to resign her position as a fellow member of the club’s governing council.
A club hearing found Ms Mok to have breached club rules and expelled her.
She is suing the Lansdowne for £50,000 in damages for “loss of privacy, injury to feelings and person, distress and damage to [her] reputation”.
Ms Mok claims she was targeted for questioning the council’s financial decisions and governance arrangements.
Ms Monk’s legal team say she should receive whistleblower protection.
Among her allegations were that club committee members hid £45,000 of spending for “Zoom booths and rentable officers” and that the council pushed proposals for a £350,000 rooftop bar despite a budget of just £200,000 for maintenance.
Ms Mok also claims that staff at the club were instructed to keep tabs on her and treat her differently.
A spokesman for the club said: “We were surprised that these claims have been brought. We will be resisting them very strongly.”