{"id":68583,"date":"2025-09-17T00:09:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/68583\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T00:09:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T00:09:09","slug":"former-salesman-tells-wrc-he-was-offered-bribe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/68583\/","title":{"rendered":"Former salesman tells WRC he was offered \u2018bribe\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former salesman at an IT multinational alleged that he was offered a \u201cbribe\u201d by a middleman for a distributor who is claimed to have benefited from an alleged discount of hundreds of thousands of euro on a contract with an Arab government ministry, a tribunal has heard.<\/p>\n

Cork-headquartered Solar Winds is defending statutory complaints under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 and the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 brought by Ali Izzy, a former salesman based at its Cork offices managing business with clients in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Mr Izzy was dismissed on foot of a company probe in summer 2024, following complaints of \u201cinsubordination\u201d against him from Abdul Rehman, the former sales director for the Middle East, a sitting of the Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> in Cork heard.<\/p>\n

Mr Rehman said in evidence on Tuesday that he reported Mr Izzy to human resources (HR) after he \u201crefused\u201d an additional discount for the government ministry in a deal being brokered by the middleman.<\/p>\n

Mark Harty SC, appearing for Mr Izzy with David Byrnes BL, instructed by Gr\u00e1inne O\u2019Donovan of Douglas Law, put it to Mr Rehman that his client had \u201cdifficulty\u201d with the middleman. <\/p>\n

It was after the distributor \u201cattempted to defraud the company and bribe\u201d his client, counsel said.<\/p>\n

Mr Rehman accepted that Mr Izzy had mentioned to him being approached with the alleged bribe offer, but said: \u201cHe has to go through the official HR channels. It\u2019s nothing to do with me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Harty put it to him that he \u201cmust have been aware of improper actions\u201d on the part of the middleman. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d Mr Rehman replied.<\/p>\n

He said Mr Izzy had shown him nothing in writing to \u201cprove he was offered a bribe\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you ever get offered a bribe by [the middleman]?\u201d Mr Harty asked.\u201cNo,\u201d Mr Rehman said.<\/p>\n

Mr Rehman\u2019s complaint email was read into the record by Mary Fay BL, appearing instructed by Arthur Cox for the respondent, Solar Winds.<\/p>\n

It stated: \u201cAli\u2019s behaviour is disrespectful and unacceptable over the past few days. He recalled the discount twice after he\u2019d had approval twice … we had to do the process three times,\u201d she quoted.<\/p>\n

Ms Fay said Mr Izzy had made \u201cadmissions\u201d during a disciplinary process meeting that he \u201ccancelled the quotes in the system as that was not his deal and he was unhappy with the big discount\u201d.<\/p>\n

The tribunal was told Mr Izzy told a company investigator that the middleman \u201chad tried to bribe him\u201d and \u201coffered him \u20ac10,000\u201d. The minutes recorded that Mr Izzy\u2019s position was that the \u201cactual price\u201d of the deal was \u20ac1.3 million and \u201cnot what is mentioned in the system\u201d, Ms Fay submitted.<\/p>\n

Mr Harty had put it to Mr Rehman earlier that the discount offered in the end was 62 per cent and that the price was reduced to between \u20ac450,000 and \u20ac500,000. <\/p>\n

Mr Rehman said discounts on such deals could \u201cgo up to 90 per cent\u201d in the Middle East and that once VAT and professional services were accounted for it was \u201cnot a very significant jump\u201d.<\/p>\n

Adjudicator Tom O\u2019Driscoll has adjourned the case overnight after hearing further evidence from the company disciplinary officer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former salesman at an IT multinational alleged that he was offered a \u201cbribe\u201d by a middleman for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-68583","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}