A Kenyan subsidiary of the British multinational security services company headquartered in London, England, G4S has been sued by former Human Resource manager over alleged wrongful termination of his employment contract.
David Mutisya is now demanding Sh100 million in compensation after being dismissed in 2018.
He told the Labour Relations Court that his woes at the security firm started when he questioned opaque hiring of employees after working for the company for over two decades.
”We had people being employed without going through the prescribed process. When I challenged the process as the human resource manager, I was kicked out without any compensation even after serving the firm for 25 year,” Mutisya said.
Under the Kenyan law, it is a requirement that employers should provide equal opportunities without discrimination.
For expatriates, they should provide more specialised skilled tasks which Kenyans cannot perform.
The security firm has in the past been bedeviled by controversies over hiring process of staffers, non-compliance to minimum wage and alleged collusion in criminal activities notably money heists on transit.
In 2019, G4S staff were placed at the center of a brazen cash heist at the Barclays Bank of Kenya (BBK), now Absa automated teller machines after it emerged the bank had outsourced its key operations to an international private security firm, G4S.
According to preliminary police investigations, the security firm enjoys unlimited access to ATMs operations including maintainance, physical manning, loading of cash and storage of liquid cash is entirely controlled by G4S.
Detectives from the Economic and Commercial Crimes Unit and Cyber Crime narrowed their investigations analysisng the bank and G4S systems to establish where the breach caused to the cash machine originated from using an ATM malware; a harmful software used to siphon cash from four ATMs in Nairobi.
“Barclays Bank of Kenya (BBK) has outsourced most of its operations. Investigations are covering a wider scope of those suspected to be directly linked and in this case those who are in control of the systems and those operating on the periphery.” A senior officer privy with the investigations said.
Effectively, as the custodian of the critical bank systems, the security firm has been profiled as a principal player into the heist a case reminiscent to the Sh80million theft at Cooperative Bank involving G4S guards.
“The Barclays Bank money is stored in G4S stores. They only tell them which ATMs to load and what amount.” Another source added.
Investigators narrowed down the probe to establish if the suspects’ still at large use an ATM malware that make ATMs spit out cash just by connecting to its USB port and running the software.
Since May 2017, a malware named Cutlet Maker has been in the market.
Neither the identity of individuals behind the well-choreographed cash-theft syndicate been established nor recovery of the stolen liquid cash been recovered.
However, a CCTV footage obtained by detectives and is being reviewed showed a Toyota Probox with three people on board and one of them masked in South B, Nairobi as the profiled suspects behind the loss of over Sh14million within 24 hours.
The siphoned cash is suspected to have been dispensed to the retract bin where ordinarily rejected money, for example, poor quality money or too mutilated notes are withheld.
Sh1million was stolen at the Marter Hospital Barclays cash machine was smeared with petroleum ostensibly to blur clarity of images captured.
At KNH atm, Sh4, 315,000 was stolen and was being manned by a G4S private security guard while Sh6, 290,000 was stolen at unmanned Mutindwa Road ATM. There was no CCTV installed as well.
The actual amount stolen at Kenya Cinema Barclays ATM within the Nairobi Central Business District is still unknown.
In 2010, Cooperative Bank lost of Ksh80 million from the headquarters in Nairobi after some people posing as cash–in-transit crew from the security firm G4S, went to the bank headquarters and calmly signed away the cash that was due for collection.
Prior to termination of Mutisya’s employment contract, he served the multinational company in various roles, having joined the firm in 1992 as a personnel officer.
In court papers seen by The Informer, the former manager describes in graphic detail how his opposition to a flawed recruitment process of couriers in February 2018 among others triggered a chain of events that eventually led to his exit from G4S.
He accuses the company’s human resource directors at the time of witch hunt and blatantly flouting the company’s recruitment policies by presenting for induction training and subsequent employment of candidates who had not attended a selection interview process in a clear case of favouritism and or corruption.
Through his advocate Fidel Limo of Limo & Njoroge Law Firm, he is seeking a declaration by the Labour and Employment Relations Court that the termination was unlawful and unfair amongst other prayers.
The firm has dismissed Mutisya’s version of events, stating that it will strongly defend its position in court.
“We do not recognise Mutisya’s version of events and we will be vigorously defending our position in the Labour Relations Court,” the local office said in an email response.
The case comes at the backdrop of a transition in G4S Kenya Limited after the parent company G4S Plc whose headquarters is in the United Kingdom was recently acquired by Allied Universal of the United States of America.
An earlier bid last year for G4S Plc by GardaWorld a Canadian Security Firm whose local face is KK Security flopped with the later citing undetermined legal suits against G4S and pension liabilities.