Damning judgement as finance chief loses £5,000 pay claim 8/10/13
The former finance director at Scotland’s National Gaelic Arts Agency who was sacked for alleged fraud - has had his £5, 000 claim for back pay rejected.
John Murdo Macmillan of Morison Avenue, Stornoway, also had his bid for unfair dismissal thrown out.
Mr Macmillan worked for Pròiseact nan Ealan (PNE), as the body is called in Gaelic, for nine years.
He was dismissed in 2012 for gross misconduct for buying hundreds of pounds worth of goods for himself on the agency’s credit card.
He “hid” the costs in the agency’s books, an employment tribunal heard.
Macmillan - who has a first class honours law degree - took the agency to an employment tribunal claiming unfair dismissal and seeking £5,000 of salary he said was owed.
Employment tribunal judge Stewart Watt has thrown out both claims.
Though some witnesses gave evidence about the alleged unpaid wages at an earlier hearing in May, Mr Macmillan himself never backed up the point when he went into the witness box when the adjourned tribunal reconvened in early September.
On his application for unfair dismissal, a damning tribunal judgement says “there was more than reasonable grounds for (PNE) to conclude that Mr Macmillan had been deliberating falsifying and duplicating expenses from February to June 2012.”
Employment judge Stewart Watt found there was “reasonable grounds for PNE” to conclude he was “hiding his personal purchases within the company’s accounts.”
Mr Watt highlighted the needs for “considerable trust and confidence” in a company’s finance director and PNE were entitled to decide to sack him.
John Murdo Macmillan, a former lecturer at Cape Town University, maintained he was only following an accepted practice within PNE and always intended to repay the money.
It included £62 of petrol from a fuel station at Drumnadrochit which was allocated to the budget for a Skye heritage fashion event.
He also used the visa card for new tyres worth £204.95 from Kwik Fit in Inverness.
Some £143 spent at the Moray Golf Club was charged to the card as was £139 for new spectacles at a Stornoway opticians.
The same mileage expenses was claimed three times for a February 2012 visit to Skye for the fashion event.
He gave himself a second payment for an Inverness trip in defiance of Ms Morrison specific refusal to approve the £124 claim.
Mr Macmillan had countersigned own claim and paid himself the money against express instructions and without telling her. He said it was done in error.
During the tribunal, lawyer Frank Lefevre insisted PNE failed to carry out a proper investigation. It had already decided the finance boos was guilty of fraud before a disciplinary hearing which dismissed him, he claimed.
He maintained PNE broke its own rules and failed give Mr Macmillan a fair hearing . Neither did the agency honour its duty to keep informed and give him an opportunity to state his case - and to appeal - at all stages of the investigation into him.
Mr Lefevre had hit out at PNE creative director, effectively the body’s chief executive, Erica Morrison, for being the “judge in her own case” by levelling the accusations, then leading the investigation and to adjudicate and deliver the sentence on the two-person disciplinary panel which sacked Mr Macmillan.
But the employment judge concluded Erica Morrison was a “truthful and honest witness” who was “prepared to listen to logic and reason” while Mr Macmillan was not “credible or reliable,” who gave “convoluted attempted explanations” and had been “deliberately obstructive” over a PNE disciplinary hearing.
Ms Morrison conducted a reasonable investigation and received a detailed report after “sensibly” calling in Mann Judd Gordon accountants which handled a review of expenses accounts in a professional way, said the employment judge
He said Erica Morrison held no grudge against Mr Macmillan and was “not hell bent on getting rid of him,” thus, given the overall circumstances, the procedural flaws were “not fatal.”
The employment judge highlighted an “obvious fraud” central to Mr Macmillan’s apparent suggestion that it was “normal practice” to get the VAT back on personal purchases by putting them through the company’s accounts. Mr Macmillan was not entitled to get the goods without paying VAT, he said.