21 November 2019

St. Petersburg's Kuibyshev District Court examines a statement of claim by a former employee of Lenmetrogiprotrans LLC (LGMT) against her employer. Margarita Solovieva was fired from her position of the Head of Electrotechnical Department of the company for disclosing commercial secrets by uploading data to the cloud storage. The claimant challenges the legality of her dismissal and earlier written reprimands which as she claims had been intentionally instigated by the defendant with use of internal conflict related to activities of Mrs Solovieva as the Chairman of the Board of LMGT.

By case law, employer must first establish a committee which would then carry out an official investigation into the fact whether the employee has committed the attributed offence, and the results of the investigation must be documented in a report, Tatyana Nikolayenko, Head of Labour Law Practice, Khrenov & Partners, states. “According to the facts included in the statement of claim, it seems that this order was not followed by the employer. Further comments may be provided upon examination of all documents”, she also notes.

The full article can be read here (in Russian).