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Accountant ‘treated like a prostitute’ sues City firm for £40million
Tim Stewart13.07.09
An accountant who claims she was made to feel “like a prostitute” by her bosses is suing a City firm for £40million in a record race discrimination claim.
Romanian Mihaela Popa says she suffered a string of racist and sexual jibes while being bullied at accountancy giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Miss Popa, 31, says that a colleague told her “Eastern Europeans are whores” and referred to her as “Mihaela and porn”. She says she was accused of only being in London to “live it up” and quizzed about returning to Romania, given menial tasks to perform and ignored for promotion.
When she asked one manager why she was given mundane work, he allegedly said that “someone was needed to mop up the s**t”.
During a discussion about bird flu, a male colleague allegedly pointed at her and said “this Romanian bird will have a slow death”. Some of her workmates even believed she was a Communist spy for the Romanian secret police, she alleges.
Miss Popa, of Hampstead, earned £41,000 a year as a forensic accountant. She claims that the discrimination prevented her becoming a PwC partner earning at least £500,000 a year plus bonuses.
She is demanding £40 million in compensation for loss of earnings and hurt feelings — believed to be the highest amount ever claimed in a race discrimination dispute. She claims that the jibe about Eastern European women being whores “summarises the way I was perceived and the treatment I experienced”.
PwC strenuously denies her allegations and is vigorously defending her tribunal action.
Miss Popa studied for an MBA in the US and started her career at PwC's office in Bucharest in 2000. She says she suffered sexual harassment and race discrimination within months of moving to the firm's Chicago branch before transferring to London in September 2004.
She claims the treatment became “progressively unbearable” until she felt she had no choice but to resign in November 2006 after being off sick for several months with depression and anxiety. Speaking outside court, she said: “They said that they thought I could be a future partner but then they never gave me the opportunity.”
Miss Popa lost a previous employment tribunal claim for race discrimination against PwC but claims to have more detailed evidence for this claim at Central London employment tribunal.
A PwC spokesman said: “We will be vigorously defending the most recent claims.”
