Westpac ‘star chamber’ sacking overturned

Westpac has been ordered to reinstate a banker sacked for alleged “serious” breaches, including sending confidential customer information via personal email.

Westpac has been ordered to reinstate an employee sacked for alleged serious breaches of the bank’s code of conduct, including sending confidential customer information via his unsecured personal email.

Kefeng “Ken” Deng, who worked as a mobile lending manager with St George, filed an application for unfair dismissal after being terminated in May this year over eight separate allegations of misconduct.

Mr Deng was instructed by the bank’s internal investigator to attend a meeting in March during which he was told he would be provided “with the details of the allegation or complaint against you”.

He attended the meeting with his wife as a support person. The meeting started at 11am and went for five hours with “only two short breaks”. Mr Deng was “shown some 30-40 documents” and neither he nor his wife were provided “access to any food, tea or coffee”.

Fair Work Commissioner Bernie Riordan said Westpac had “not proffered the applicant the requisite level of procedural fairness”.

“The process followed by the respondent resembles that of a Star Chamber,” Mr Riordan said.

“The investigation process was flawed. The applicant was entitled to receive his statutory entitlement of a ‘fair go’. The respondent’s investigative process deprived the applicant of this entitlement.”

In addition to the private email usage, Mr Deng was accused of inserting scanned signatures into loan applications, using emailed copies of customer IDs for identity verification processes, accepting customer documents from unrelated third parties, and knowingly inputting incorrect information into the system.

While agreeing the use of personal email was “undeniably reprehensible” and warranted “disciplinary action and further training”, Mr Riordan found the other seven allegations were “either unsubstantiated or greatly diminished”.

Mr Riordan slammed Westpac for failing to follow up on any of Mr Deng’s explanations and said only giving him 24 hours to respond to an “Intent to Terminate Employment” letter was “blatantly unfair”.

He said he was “surprised” the bank did not call any of Mr Deng’s operational managers or colleagues who might have “put into context” his actions. “Innuendo and assumption are poor substitutes for primary evidence,” he said.

Mr Riordan said he could see “no personal benefit” for Mr Deng in deliberately breaching Westpac policy by using personal email.

“I am prepared to accept the evidence of the applicant that, due to the majority of the applicant’s customers being of Chinese origin, a number of his clients had a mistrust in the banking system and would only send this information to the applicant’s private account,” he said.

Finding the dismissal was “harsh, unjust and unreasonable”, Mr Riordan ordered Mr Deng be reinstated as “if I simply awarded the applicant compensation, he may still struggle to find alternate employment in the banking industry”.

“The applicant has been without pay for 24 weeks,” he said.

“I order the applicant be paid 10 weeks’ pay. I have deducted 14 weeks’ pay due to the misconduct of the applicant in sending customers’ personal information to his private email address in breach of the respondent’s policies.”

A Westpac spokeswoman said: “While we are considering reviewing this case, confidentially prevents us from commenting on employee legal matters.”

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