The corporation’s sacked New Zealand Managing Director, Gavin Pollard, is making claims of unjustifiable dismissal and is seeking to reclaim his old job.
An article in the New Zealand Herald reveals that Fuji Xerox is continuing to face problems in the wake of its accounts scandal, this time in the form of complaints from the company’s former New Zealand MD, Gavin Pollard, who “claims he’s been made a scapegoat by the Japanese parent over the unit’s dodgy accounting and overpayment of sales commissions”.
Pollard is now seeking to be reinstated in his old position, though his attempt to secure an interim reinstatement ahead of the Employment Relations Authority hearing was turned down on 4 September 2017 by authority member, Vicki Campbell.
Campbell felt that while “there’s an arguable case Pollard was unjustifiably dismissed”, the former MD’s “case for permanent reinstatement was weak”.
Another substantive hearing will take place in October, and if Pollard is successful Campbell is confident Fuji Xerox will pay any compensation required.
The disgraced Pollard was general manager of national sales operations for the New Zealand branch of Fuji Xerox between 2012 and 2015, later being appointed to his Managing Director role in April 2015.
He was sacked from this position when Fuji Xerox accused him of “serious misconduct” after a whistleblower alerted the parent company “inappropriate accounting practices” at the New Zealand subsidiary. An independent audit was subsequently carried out and found there may have been “a potential fraud” during the time when Pollard was general manager.
Fuji Xerox claimed Pollard was guilty of “breaching internal policies and participating in appropriate accounting practices”, as well as “amending a number of deals to avoid a material impact on revenue”, approving a 2015 overstatement of revenue, “signing off on inflated target volumes” and other inappropriate actions. Pollard was subsequently dismissed in July of this year, following a disciplinary meeting.
Now he is claiming that the grounds for his dismissal were unjustifiable, declaring that there were “serious deficiencies in the process used by FXNZ to reach its conclusions” and claiming that he had been “dismissed for decisions outside his control”. He also felt that he had been treated “disparately” from former NZ MD Neil Whittaker, whose role he had taken on and who “was able to enter into an agreement with Fuji Japan to leave the organisation with a significant payout”.
Vicki Campbell said in response to Pollard’s fears that his reputation would be sullied if he wasn’t temporarily reinstated that his identification with the scandal had most likely “already tainted Mr Pollard’s reputation”. She also stated, in response to his claims that as sole breadwinner he would have to take out an overdraft, that, due to Fuji Xerox’s “lifting of a one-year restraint of working in the industry” he would be able to acquire a position elsewhere.