A WHISTLEBLOWER who helped expose a secret bonus scheme at Harrow Association of Voluntary Services was forced out of her job, an employment tribunal found.
Olga Sidorenko, of Station Road, North Harrow, launched a bid for £50,000 compensation over claims she had to quit her bookkeeping post at the organisation an umbrella group for hundreds of charities after tipping off Harrow Council and the auditor of the accounts about unspent grant money being moved without the funders permission and used to pay staff.
Following a week-long hearing, Watford Employment Tribunal agreed the 50-year-old administration and finance manager had made protected disclosures, which protects whistleblowers leaking commercial information in the public interest to expose crime or malpractice, and therefore she should have been free from victimisation at work.
On Friday, January 27, the three tribunal judges said HAVS, which was based in Pinner Road, Harrow, at the time, had made Ms Sidorenkos position untenable and she was forced to resign a procedure known as constructive dismissal.
However, the judges did not find a direct link between the protected disclosures and her dismissal.
Ms Sidorenko was granted a £4,800 basic award, £300 for a loss of statutory rights and £2,500 in lost salary.
A PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by Harrow Council into the financial mismanagement of HAVS confirmed bonuses were paid in June 2008 and March 2009 to a handful of staff, including then-chief executive Julie Smith and Ms Sidorenko, after approval from just one trustee, former chairman Alan Peel, rather than the whole board.
Ms Sidorenko told the tribunal she had tipped off the auditor because she was concerned it was not an oversight abut was something more sinister.
