Crispin Odey: I can’t keep in mind telling feminine worker ‘I may assault you now’

[ad_1] Going through a litany of questions over sexual harassment allegations which have left his profession in tatters, the hedge fund tycoon Crispin Odey has instructed a court docket he doesn't keep in mind cornering a feminine worker after a boozy lunch and saying to her “I may assault you now”.

The 67-year-old made the feedback throughout his first day within the witness field as a part of a three-week court docket case that Odey hopes will overturn the Metropolis regulator’s determination to ban him from the UK’s monetary providers business.

Odey, who appeared within the London courtroom carrying a pink tie and braces, mentioned that whereas he remembered the worker as an “enticing lady”, he didn't recall the alleged incident, which attorneys for the Monetary Conduct Authority (FCA) mentioned had been recorded within the worker’s diary.

The entry referring to Odey, dated 24 January 2020, mentioned: “Comes again from boozy lunch and corners me within the hall. Him: I may assault you now. Me: Please don’t. Him: You could possibly sue me for that.”

Requested for his response to the diary entry, Odey mentioned he didn't keep in mind it, saying solely that the worker “was a horny lady … she saved a diary which I didn’t learn about”.

He mentioned: “Given that somebody retains a diary, I anticipate they're writing what they mentioned, however after I learn these items it’s no shock I don’t keep in mind them. They have been phrases.”

He admitted to the court docket to having groped a colleague’s breasts with out her consent in 2005, which he blamed on having been beneath sedatives after root canal therapy. He mentioned the girl accepted his apology and continued to work for the agency for one more eight years.

The Brexit-backing hedge fund chief, who resigned in 2023, is making an attempt to overturn the regulator’s determination to ban him from taking any senior roles within the UK monetary sector. The FCA claimed he confirmed a “lack of integrity” by intentionally trying to frustrate an investigation by his personal hedge fund into allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies.

Odey mentioned in his witness assertion that he had not tried to stop an investigation however that he had tried to have the FCA rule on whether or not he was match and correct first. “I couldn't ponder a unexpectedly convened disciplinary course of being undertaken internally that might see me leaving the agency, earlier than the authority had accomplished its investigation and selected my conduct over a 20-year interval,” he mentioned.

He claimed he had been handled unfairly by the FCA. “Each my relationship and the agency’s relationship with the authority modified when in Might 2020 I used to be charged in reference to a sexual assault allegation courting again to 1999. I can now see that the case was taken up by the authority as one thing of a trigger célèbre as a result of on the time they have been searching for to claim their attain over non-financial misconduct. I turned, I worry, a poster boy for the authority’s agenda.”

The FCA claims Odey is just not a match and correct particular person to run a monetary providers firm, having proven a “reckless disregard” for compliance and having handled inside disciplinary processes with “contempt”.

Odey has since launched a £79m libel lawsuit towards the Monetary Occasions, saying he suffered “very important monetary loss” due to articles alleging he had sexually assaulted or harassed a number of girls. The allegations, which emerged within the media in summer time 2023, ultimately led to him being faraway from OAM, which introduced plans to shut in October that 12 months.

The FCA’s lawyer Clare Sibson pushed Odey on numerous different harassment allegations, together with these filed by a receptionist in her mid-20s. Odey had invited the receptionist to a taking pictures weekend in Bristol in 2020, which she ultimately declined, recalling to investigators that she knew “what was anticipated of me”. The receptionist was later fired from the agency with no bonus, which Odey mentioned he was not concerned in and that he believed was unfair.

Odey instructed the court docket throughout an at-times testy cross-examination that he believed his relationship with the unnamed receptionist was “consensual”, and he alleged she was a “flirt” who left different members of workers jealous of her interplay with him.

He mentioned he had in all probability been swept up in “an outdated man’s dream” {that a} girl in her 20s can be fascinated with a person in his 60s, however later realised she was “harmful”. “The way in which she flirted with me was inappropriate, on either side,” Odey mentioned.

He conceded that over time his flirtations with younger girls within the workplace could have made him appear to be a “creepy outdated man”.

In his witness assertion, Odey admitted to having been “one thing of a dinosaur” who had not “tailored to the trendy working atmosphere”. He mentioned an inside investigation had made it clear “that I had acquired issues unsuitable”. “It was not proper that members of workers felt uncomfortable due to my behaviour,” he added within the assertion.

Odey can be dealing with civil private damage claims by 5 girls, together with one who accused him of rape, which he additionally denies. These circumstances are scheduled to be heard collectively in joint proceedings in June.