A billionaire hotelier allegedly sacked his company’s senior British lawyer when she blew the whistle on alleged tax evasion, a tribunal has been told.
Sir Michael Kadoorie was celebrated last month when London’s first £1 billion hotel was opened by the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. The event at The Peninsula in Belgravia was also attended by Lady Helen Taylor, Prince Michael of Kent and Sophie Turner, the Game of Thrones actress.
In the same week claims of fraud and intimidation were levelled at Kadoorie and his family at an employment tribunal in south London. They deny the claims.
Samantha Bradley, a solicitor, described her experience working for the family in Hong Kong for more than a decade as “somewhat like an unbelievably bad movie, including allegations of organised crime, intimidation, harassment, death threats, family members trying to conceal matters from other family members and even sexual harassment”.
Bradley, 53, claims she has had a number of break-ins including one in which an outside tap was turned on and flooded her garden, and another when someone stole her dog and later released it on her road.
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Specific details of the alleged frauds have been redacted from court documents.
Bradley, who says she earned £500,000 a year working for the family, claims she blew the whistle on “potential tax evasion past or future in the US, UK, Canada and Australia” and misconduct by other lawyers.
Her former employer says the process is a “cynical and misguided attempt” to put pressure on the family to pay Bradley more money. Bradley told the tribunal she was responsible for looking after “billions of pounds” in trust.
Kadoorie, 82, who is worth more than $10 billion (£7.8 billion), according to the Bloomberg billionaire’s index, is based in Hong Kong.
Bradley told the tribunal in a witness statement: “I was doing high value work with some of the leading QCs in the world on major issues. I was going on first-class business trips seeing important people making important decisions. I had a high-flying role.”
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The solicitor claimed that some of the family did not like her straight-laced approach and Kadoorie complained that she “put the ‘fear of God’ into us over tax”.
Bradley also claimed she was told she would never be promoted to executive level because “Sir Michael would not permit a woman to be appointed to the board”.
She also said that Kadoorie’s son Philip, who is expected to take over when his father retires, “appears to be a chip off the old block, seemingly also preferring young white men with more flexible attitudes to compliance and weaker performance”.
She claimed that Philip, 32, announced at a meeting of executives that he wanted to get rid of the “dead wood” — which she says was age discrimination because she was referred to as an “older female”.
Bradley also said her employer “resented her finding happiness after divorce as a single woman” and she was warned by a solicitor colleague not to marry her Muslim fiancé.
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She claims that before leaving her role she was given a copy of Douglas Murray’s novel The Madness of Crowds by the same colleague, which she claims “references women who harassed and seduced men and brought their downfall, as well as offensive views about Muslims and gays”.
Bradley, who says she has an “aversion” to the family’s Zionist views, claims she was “driven out” of her job. Bradley left her job in 2020 and claims police in Hong Kong have told her not to return.
She was offered a £2.1 million severance package and a £800,000-a-year consultancy role, which she now alleges was a bribe to encourage her to conceal misconduct from authorities and younger members of the family, the tribunal was told.
She said that problems were kept hidden from the Kadoorie children because any penalties for tax evasion would affect their inheritance. Kadoorie’s sister, Rita McAuley, and her billionaire husband, Ronald, 88, who have a home in Chester Square, Belgravia, are also being sued by Bradley, as are the directors Andrew Brandler and John Leigh.
Bradley told the tribunal: “I have suffered significant detriments because of complying with my mandatory duties as a solicitor. Not least because these extended to my being honest and acting with integrity in the context of my role as director of a private trust company managing assets worth many billions of dollars.”
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She claims to be the victim of unfair dismissal, because she is a whistleblower, victimisation, and age, race and sex discrimination. A preliminary hearing took place over video to decide whether the UK court hds jurisdiction to hear the case, because Bradley was based in Hong Kong.
Thomas Croxford KC, acting for the Kadoorie family, said that Bradley’s claims should be struck out because the case does not fall within the territorial jurisdiction of the Employment Tribunals of England and Wales. He told the tribunal: “[Bradley] is not a whistleblower and has been subjected to no retaliation or detriment in response to any disclosures she has made.
“Similarly the complaints of discrimination, harassment and victimisation, which are alleged to have been on grounds of almost the complete range of protected characteristics, are equally misconceived. Regrettably, her claims and complaints to others are not brought in good faith but in a cynical and misguided attempt to bring pressure to bear upon [Kadoorie].”
The employment judge Eoin Fowell reserved judgment to a later date.
