(May 5): A senior BNP Paribas SA banker who was fired for allegedly bullying his subordinates on the trading floor lost a €1.7 million unfair-dismissal award on appeal after judges drew on testimony from staffers.
The Paris Court of Appeal reversed an earlier decision that Omar Alami, formerly head of BNP’s equity derivatives sales for Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg, had been wrongly dismissed for gross misconduct.
In a ruling released last month, judges said the allegations set out in BNP’s dismissal letter were "substantiated". The lender fired Alami in 2019 after receiving complaints sparked by an incident where he allegedly called a trader “useless” and “incompetent” in front of colleagues over a potential €800,000 mistake.
The court cited testimony gathered by BNP as part of its internal investigation into the harassment complaints, including a staffer describing Alami’s management as “emotional terrorism” and another as "feudal". One banker said: “I’ve never been so well paid, yet I’ve never felt so unhappy at work.”
While the supposed mistake that invoked Alami’s wrath turned out to be a false alarm, the appeals court considered the testimony against him consistent enough to justify his dismissal. It also cut back a deferred bonus worth more than €650,000 that had been part of the initial award granted by the Paris employment tribunal in 2022.
A lawyer for Alami declined to immediately comment while BNP declined to make any statement.
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In their April ruling, the appellate judges didn’t buy into Alami’s argument that BNP had discriminated against him owing to his Moroccan origins. The court said in its ruling that while Alami claimed he was chided over his origins and nicknamed "couscous", he failed to provide any evidence to back his allegations, which BNP has denied.
The Paris appeals court acknowledged that it must have been “unpleasant” for Alami to be accused by a staffer of “emotional terrorism” in BNP’s dismissal letter. But, the judges added, that “does not suggest discrimination against Mr Alami on the basis of his origins by the company but rather reflects the employee’s expression of the significant distress he was experiencing”.
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