The former CEO of a medical recruitment company who was accused of fraud and dismissed after raising concerns over tax avoidance has been awarded £60,000 by the London Central Employment Tribunal.

According to People Management, the tribunal ruled London-based medical and paramedic recruitment firm Capital Care Services (CCS) subjected its former CEO, Faiza Rizvi, to protected disclosure detriments after she raised concerns that both CCS and its parent company, Positive Healthcare, were “deliberately taking large sums of money out [of the business]” to avoid paying tax.

Positive Healthcare is a multi-framework approved specialist healthcare recruitment consultancy which specialises in providing work for healthcare professionals in private hospitals and the NHS.

The tribunal said the firm “subjected Rizvi to protected disclosure detriments when it threatened to report her to newspapers, accused her of fraud, blocked access to her company email account, disconnected her mobile telephone and threatened to dismiss her”.

She was awarded £48,512.59 in compensation for unfair dismissal, and £8,761 for injury to feelings as a result of protected disclosure detriments.

Rizvi was employed by CCS, which supplied clinical staff to the NHS, as Chief Executive Officer from April 2006 until December 2017, when she was summarily dismissed. CCS has since been liquidated.

Employment tribunal Judge Brown held that CCS provided “no evidence of any alternative reason for the detriments, other than the claimant’s protected disclosures”.

The tribunal heard Rizvi believed Positive Healthcare and CCS were deliberately taking large sums of money out of the CCS business and that this was being done to avoid paying tax to HMRC. The veracity of these claims has never been tested.

At an annual board meeting on 27 November 2017, CCS claimed Rizvi had fraudulently amended, or instructed others to fraudulently amend compliance documents. She was told to resign and told she would be paid one month’s salary. Rizvi told the meeting that she had not done anything wrong and would not resign. Immediately after this meeting, her phone was disconnected and she was blocked from her email account.

CCS chair Gary Ashworth, who is also the co-founder and Chairman of recruitment firm InterQuest Group, then informed Rizvi by letter that her employment had been immediately terminated, without notice or notice pay, on the grounds of gross misconduct.

InterQuest, a specialist recruiter in the technology, analytics and digital sectors, delisted from AIM in June 2018. In its last published results for the year ended 31 December 2017, the company reported revenue of £136.0 million and an operating loss of £1.2 million after exceptional items.

The tribunal stated that the accusations had an impact on Rizvi’s emotional state.

Judge Brown added Ashworth had behaved in an “unreasonable and oppressive way” and that “the reason for the dismissal was the fact that the claimant had made protected disclosures.” The claimant’s dismissal was ruled automatically unfair.

Staffing Industry Analysts reached out to CCS’s parent company Positive Healthcare for comment but the company had not yet responded.