Vice President's Fake Expense Claims: How Should We Handle His Harassing Emails?

Issue with Vice President - Marketing & Sales

This is for your information. One of our Vice Presidents - Marketing & Sales has attached fake hotel bills and has not worked in the field from April 2017 to May 2017, yet claimed expenses for both months. Now, he has resigned and is asking for a settlement. We have sent him Full and Final Settlement (F&FS) documents by email and registered post. We have recovered the expenses and salary for both months based on information received from the field in written emails. The VP of Marketing & Sales is now sending harassing emails to the company. What action should be taken? Please guide us.

Regards,
HR Dept.

Dear Sir,

Vice President Rajesh Kumar Jaiswal - V.P. - Mktg & Sales. We have sent him the Full and Final settlement by recovering his salary and expenses of April 2015 and May 2016. Now, he is sending threatening emails to the company. The amount recovered is due to fake hotel bills attached, and emails received from the field indicate that he did not work in the field in April 2015 and May 2015. He has now resigned. Also, please note that the recovery amount exceeds Rs. 1 lakh.

Please guide us in this matter.

Regards,
HR Dept.

Upon discovering the padding or fudging of the hotel bills, you should have initiated a domestic enquiry. The VP should have been given a chance to prove his point. If misconduct was proven in the enquiry, then you could have proceeded with the recovery process. Your issue lies in neglecting the legal process, hence the alleged harassment.

Why did your company accept the resignation pending disciplinary action against the VP? Upon receiving the resignation letter, you could have responded by stating that the resignation is held in abeyance until the disciplinary proceedings against him are concluded.

Even now, you have the option to conduct a domestic enquiry, although it might seem like putting the cart before the horse. Regardless of the cart or horse's position, choosing the right direction by conducting the enquiry could prevent potential trouble that the VP may cause in the future. Without a proper domestic enquiry, if the VP decides to file a lawsuit against your company for underpayment of his legitimate dues, his position would be stronger.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

I wonder if you really hold a managerial position in your organization. Firstly, except for the year 2015, you have misquoted the years 2016 and 2017 in both of your posts. Secondly, you should not have mentioned the name of the VP, as he could potentially take legal action against you and the management for defamation due to mentioning his name in an open forum, even if an investigation revealed that he may have submitted fake bills.

Investigation of Fake Bills

Regarding the fake bills, if there has been no investigation done with the hotel management yet, your organization should conduct an inquiry with the hotel management and document the findings to be included in the company records to address his threats.

Please let me know if you need further assistance.

Regards,
HR Dept.

In addition to the goof-up regarding the years, as PS Dhingra pointed out, there does seem to be something amiss in the information you provided. You say that the hotel bills are fake... How do you know? Do you have a written confirmation from the hotels concerned? If yes, how come the VP is threatening and raising a stink... since he surely knows he faked the bills, and human nature being what it is, one usually attempts to keep silent and the issue under wraps when he/she is exposed? Or does your line "information received from the field in written email" mean that you depended on your field staff to arrive at the conclusion? Without any written corroboration from the hotels? If yes, then maybe someone in the field staff is playing a game here... for whatever reasons?

Irrespective of what actually transpired, like other members pointed out, an internal inquiry would be logical and most appropriate.

Regards,
TS

What is the meaning of "harassing emails"? What kind of harassment is this? It's easy enough with emails. Just auto-delete it without reading.

What do you mean by recovery? Are you saying you are paying him net of deduction or are you still to recover the amount from him? If so, have you sent a legal notice?

Please be clear when you post anything on the forum.

The year mentioned in the above email is April 2015 and May 2015. It was a mistake on my part to have written it incorrectly.

Proof of Fake Bills

Regarding the proof of fake bills, we have written proof from hotels and from field personnel that the VP of Marketing and Sales did not work in the field during both months.

Harassing Emails

In relation to harassing emails, the individual in question is persistently threatening to report the matter to the police.

The VP of Marketing and Sales is denying that the bills attached to his expense statement belong to him.

Please assist us in this matter.

Regards,
HR Dept

Regarding, "He is writing again and again he will complain to the police station," just ask him to go ahead. When you have all the evidence against him, it's HE who should be more worried than you or your company. Most likely, he's only threatening.

Expense Statement Concerns

However, your line "VP - Marketing & Sales is not accepting that bills attached in his expense statement are his bills" does give a twist to the tale. If these are not his bills, then what's the problem? It means that the expense statement doesn't hold good... can't claim travel expenses for the 2 months. It only makes his case for reimbursement null & void.

And if he denies the bills you showed to him, which other bills did he attach? Were they vetted and verified by you?

Or have I misunderstood your inputs?

Regards,
TS

Mr. Ganesh Pawar,

Like Mr. Tajsateesh has pointed out, your information definitely contains deficiencies in the description of facts. As you said, "The VP of Marketing and Sales is not accepting that the bills attached in his expense statement are his bills," the question arises: who attached those bills on his behalf with the supposedly signed statement of the VP and with the same amount shown in the expense statement, if the claimant VP is declining to accept those bills as his own? Moreover, if he does not intend to accept the bills to have been attached, he should have been asked to indicate in which hotel he had stayed, for which period, and where are the real bills of his stay. Even on that, the management would have started an investigation, or he would have been asked to submit his correct expense statement/claim. Even on that, he would have been held responsible for making false claims.

Now, when you say that you "have written proof from hotels and from field people that the VP of Marketing and Sales did not work in the field for both months," and also that "he is writing again and again that he will complain to the police station," I don't know why the management is tolerating the blackmailing tactics of the ex-employee. Merely on the basis of these two pieces of evidence, the management could have lodged a complaint with the police for the blackmailing of the management by him, in spite of his false claim. So, if the facts narrated by you are correct, discuss the issue with the Directors of the company and go ahead with taking suitable action. But, if you have not yet come out with the real facts, better give a proper description of the same here for the information of the members to enable them to help you sort out your problem.

Regards

Domestic Enquiry and Preliminary Enquiry

Sir, Sh. Dinesh Divekar ji, in my opinion, has rightly opined that in the situation as mentioned by the initiator of this thread, a Domestic Enquiry should have been conducted. Before going for a Domestic Enquiry, a preliminary enquiry should have been conducted by the organization as a fact-finding process. Domestic Enquiries without a fact-finding Preliminary Enquiry are meaningless since the management will not have any proof to substantiate the charges leveled against the employee.

Compliance with Payment of Wages Act, 1936

Secondly, regarding recoveries from the full and final settlement or deductions from the wages of the employee, the question will also arise, in my opinion, whether the management has complied with the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, 1936, so far as they relate to deductions.

The first part I agree. The second part does not hold true most probably because the VP would have a salary of more than $18,000 per month. Therefore, the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act will not apply.

I still do not understand this problem with the harassing emails. If a person is writing to you again and again, all you need to do is go to your email settings and set up a rule to automatically track the emails or block them directly at the server level. Just because someone sends you an email does not mean that you need to read it. Automatically, the harassment is no longer a problem. Let him go to the police. It is highly unlikely that the police will bother with what is a fracture of a personal dispute. However, you should keep a folder ready with the complete details of your internal investigation done by an independent person, preferably your auditor, and give it to the police if they do come to your office.

All I can see is that the whole issue is going in rounds and rounds, with the same issues being raised and discussed by the members with no clarity from the initiator-end. In fact, I found some contradictory statements by him. Please see my earlier posting. Ganeshpawar says the VP refuses to agree that the Bills attached with the travel statement [proven to be fake] are not his. Then what's the VP claiming about in the first place and what's Ganeshpawar losing his sleep for?

Regards,
TS