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On Monday, Clara Wanjiku Odero, a former worker of African funds big and unicorn Flutterwave, accused the corporate’s chief govt officer Olugbenga’ GB’ Agboola of bullying and harassing her for years. She made the allegations in a Medium put up and sequence of tweets that got here after.
Within the weblog put up, Odero recounted how a sequence of undescribed occasions led her to stop her job as Head of Implementation (Remainder of Africa), in 2018 and when the time got here for her to be settled, she claimed the corporate refused to take action.
Nonetheless, upon her threats to sue the corporate, which she claimed led to varied staff from the corporate “asking to speak and resolve this amicably,” Flutterwave lastly paid her dues, she stated within the put up.
In response to Odero, what adopted was an accusation made by the corporate of her involvement with a Twitter account that known as out male members of Flutterwave’s administration for sexual harassment.
“I requested for my dues a number of occasions, [I] bought no response, in actual fact [I] was threatened and I responded accordingly,” stated Odero who now runs Credrails, an open finance platform backed by SoftBank, as CEO.
“Flutterwave paid me my cash after having a number of folks name me to name off my attorneys; attorneys I needed to name as a result of they refused to pay me just because they thought I might do nothing [a.k.a] bully me. With none proof, they accused me of being behind an account calling out the male members of administration for sexual harassment.”
Odero’s put up additionally revealed how she bought “launched to a financial institution in Nigeria for a task which GB then sabotaged by saying I used to be a foul employee, a criminal offense in California.” However what broke the camel’s again for her was when Flutterwave, “in an try to hold doing enterprise in Kenya with M-Pesa, had stored my quantity because the contact particular person on the Mpesa pay invoice.”
On this native piece printed two years in the past, Wanjiku claimed her quantity was used because the contact particular person in a fraud that concerned Flutterwave allegedly establishing non-existent intercourse events in Thika, Kenya and extorting Kenyans as much as Sh1,500.
Wanjiku sued Flutterwave for damages and gained a settlement, based on her weblog. Nonetheless, she appealed the case after deeming the cost insufficient to compensate for all of the troubles triggered. This was corroborated in a latest interview granted by Agboola and several other necessary members of Flutterwave and launched hours earlier than Wanjiku printed her Medium put up.
“An ex-employee who led certainly one of our nation expansions sued us for negligence and emotional trauma for not eradicating their identify because the contact particular person within the nation. So anytime there was a service provider enquiry, they had been known as. They stated this was emotional harassment,” Flutterwave’s CEO revealed.
“We tried to resolve this amicably, nevertheless it was unattainable. They requested for $900,000 to quash the lawsuit. We refused as a result of we didn’t consider $900,000 in damages represented the price of the alleged negligence. They proceeded with the lawsuit, and the choose awarded them an equal of $2,500 for damages. When it was time to chop the test, they declined it and stated they’d enchantment.”
The interview — which primarily highlighted Flutterwave’s rise to being Africa’s most valued firm and might need prompted Wanjiku to inform her aspect of the story — additionally famous that Flutterwave handled a sexual harassment case the place it “found an worker had been inappropriate in the direction of his crew members.” which led to fast dismissal, the corporate claimed.
TechCrunch reached out to Flutterwave for feedback, asking particular questions on Wanjiku’s claims of bullying by the corporate and its CEO. The fintech firm declined to deal with every of our questions and as a substitute despatched this response:
As a company that constantly strives to create an surroundings the place staff really feel safe and secure, we take the latest allegations of bullying from a former worker very critically.
We categorically state that there is no such thing as a place for bullying or harassment of any variety in our office. We’ve a zero-tolerance stance on bullying and a strong unbiased disciplinary committee and processes in place to stamp out abuse of any variety.
Flutterwave has grown considerably in personnel, over the past 3 years. We skilled most of that development throughout lockdown — it was essential for us to deliver your complete firm collectively to fulfill one another in a single location, (for the primary time in lots of circumstances), share our story, challenges and construct camaraderie. Sharing a few of our challenges as an organization, understandably triggered a response from a former worker.
We affirm that on the level of resignation, all monies on account of our former worker on the time had been promptly disbursed and now we have data to verify this. We nevertheless sincerely remorse the circumstances that led to the dispute and need it had been addressed in a extra well timed method.
On no account did we take this frivolously. We would like the ecosystem to have a wholesome and productive work tradition and we’re dedicated to doing our half.
In an attention-grabbing flip of occasions, Wanjiku instructed TechCrunch “I’m not allowed to talk on this for ‘the ecosystem.’”
This information comes two weeks after Lagos-based tech publication TechCabal printed a report on the poisonous and unhealthy office tradition created in Bento, an HR platform by its CEO Ebun Okubanjo. The report has sparked a dialog main different staff throughout tech and totally different sectors in Nigeria and Africa sharing related office experiences prior to now few weeks.
It is a growing story…
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