Commerzbank Accuses Ex-Analyst of ‘Wholly Bogus’ Sex Assault Claims

(Bloomberg) -- An ex-Commerzbank AG analyst made up “wholly bogus” sexual harassment allegations against a colleague and lied to courts on a “gross scale” to get compensation after he lost his job, lawyers for the bank alleged.

Damilare Ajao, who worked as a compliance analyst, was ruled to have lied in a discrimination and harassment claim against the bank — after which Commerzbank sued him for contempt. An employment judge previously said a sexual assault claim against one colleague was “pure invention” and he was “unworthy of belief.”

Ajao was dismissed after just six months at the bank in 2019 “because of the way he conducted himself with colleagues,” according to the lender. He has denied all the of the allegations at a London hearing. 

The bank’s arguments over how Ajao must have behaved were “both dangerous and unfair,” Sasha Wass, Ajao’s lawyer, said in documents prepared for the case. It was “perfectly conceivable” that a remarks by a female colleague might have caused him to “feel threatened and that he perceived this to constitute an episode of sexual harassment.”

Commerzbank alleged Ajao lied to the court and his allegations had a “serious adverse effect” on the health of a female colleague he accused of harassment. Ajao’s testimony was “tendentious and argumentative, at best, and mendacious at worst,” Louis Browne, the bank’s lawyer said in court filings. “Much of his evidence was divorced from reality and the truth.”

A lawyer for Ajao and a Commerzbank spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a requests for comment. 

The most serious contempt of court finding in English courts can be punished with imprisonment but often end up with fines or asset confiscation.

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