By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) – A former Barclays banker alleges he was undermined, harassed and denied appropriate compensation and promotion because of his Cameroonian background after raising concerns about how the bank constructed some financial models.
Louis Samnick, 44, who left Barclays in 2021 after a decade at the bank, is the second of three Black bankers to testify in a London tribunal after bringing a joint claim in which the men allege they faced racial discrimination and are demanding a combined 52.8 million pounds ($65.8 million) in compensation.
Barclays, which is defending the case, did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment in response to Samnick’s allegation that he faced racial hostility after making whistleblower reports in 2012 and 2014.
Samnick, a former vice president in the bank’s credit risk model validation team, told the East London Employment Tribunal on Monday that a former colleague had twice asked him when he was “going back to my country” and often commented about his grasp of English.
He alleges that he was not supported by managers in the same way his non-Black colleagues were and, when a new manager was appointed in 2016, was instead frozen out and sidelined, which violated his dignity and created an intimidating, hostile, degrading environment.
Claire McCann, a lawyer for Barclays, told the court Samnick had made serious, new allegations of direct racist complaints during his oral testimony “on the hoof” that were absent from voluminous written evidence – and denied there was evidence of protected disclosures in 2012 or 2014 about financial models.
“You didn’t blow the whistle … and didn’t see yourself as blowing the whistle,” she said, alleging that Samnick had constructed a narrative that he had faced subsequent racial hostility during performance assessments after the event.
“I disagree,” Samnick said. “I couldn’t understand why, other than race, this was happening to me. When I did my time line (for my employment case), it became evident to me that my problems started after that.”
Samnick was giving evidence after Henry-Serge Moune Nkeng, 35, was the first to testify on April 13, alleging he had faced years of discrimination and a hostile work environment that left him feeling trapped and in fear for his job.
McCann alleged he had been selective with his evidence, had misrepresented emails and that parts of his case were exaggerated in an attempt to explain away things that undermined his arguments.
The case by Samnick, Moune Nkeng and Christian Abanda Bella, 41, is expected to continue into June. Abanda Bella, a Barclays vice president, will face questioning on Friday.
($1 = 0.8028 pounds)
(Reporting by Kirstin Ridley; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)
