The woman at the centre of a sexual harassment claim against AMP executive Boe Pahari has accused the company of attempting to downplay the accusations levelled against him, alleging through lawyers that the private capital boss engaged in “serious, persistent and wide-ranging” conduct against her.
Breaking her silence to “defend my reputation by setting the record straight”, Julia Szlakowski, a former AMP employee based in California, has for the first time released details of the allegations levelled against Pahari concerning his conduct in 2017.
She went public after the company described the complaint against the executive as being “low level”.
The Australian Financial Review revealed last month that AMP had promoted Pahari following an investigation into the conduct despite him being penalised $500,000 over the claim.
“I was not planning to comment regarding this matter because I value my privacy and have moved on with my life,” Szlakowski said in a statement.
“However, after reading the various statements about these matters from AMP, I feel compelled to defend my reputation by setting the record straight. Filing a complaint of sexual harassment against my top boss was one of the most nerve-racking decisions of my life; but I had two choices: alert AMP or quietly resign.”
First revealed by the Age, details of Szlakowski’s seven-page complaint reportedly alleged Pahari discussed his “limp dick” when she turned down his offer to use his credit card to buy clothes, called another employee “a fag”, and asked her about the “oldest man she dated” in front of her colleagues.
Szlakowski said she had felt compelled to speak out after AMP described Pahari’s conduct as amounting to “lower-level breaches” of the company’s code of conduct and said he had apologised over the incident. The AMP chief executive, Francesco De Ferrari, later said Pahari’s “comments were not acceptable” but that he had shown genuine remorse and had “learned from the matter”.
Pahari said in a statement earlier this year: “I genuinely regret that my comments made a colleague feel uncomfortable. It was never my intention, but I accept that they had an impact and I apologised and accepted the consequences. I have learned from the matter.”
Szlakowski claims she never received an apology from Pahari and has called on the firm to release the details of her complaint and the findings of the company’s investigation.
“It was impressed upon me that my success at AMP was inextricably tied to my harasser’s support and mentorship. That ultimately proved to be true,” she said.
“Now AMP has two choices: it can continue to downplay a credible sexual harassment complaint, which impugns all survivors, or take action to bring about lasting and meaningful change.
“In making the complicated decision to speak out, I found courage in the words of one of my heroes: silence is a pandemic and the most powerful weapon of your harasser.”
Szlakowski’s Australian lawyer, Maurice Blackburn principal Josh Bornstein, alleged AMP’s public comments about the complaints were “deceptive and misleading” by “trivialis[ing]” the conduct.
“There is nothing in AMP’s public statements that acknowledge that Ms Szlakowski was [allegedlely] sexually harassed and traumatised and that her career with the company was prematurely finished as a result of what happened,” he said.
Bornstein said the findings of an investigation by AMP provided to Szlakowski had considered “each interaction” as a “discrete matter” and not as part of the entire course of conduct. He said by “isolating and de-contextualising different aspects of the alleged misconduct the findings document does not reflect the severity of the case”.
“Similarly, the investigation accepted that Mr Pahari gave Ms Szlakowski his personal credit card, asked her to communicate with him via WhatsApp while at a private club in the early hours of the morning, but again concluded that it was ‘not harassment’,” Bornstein said.
In a statement, AMP said the company had “treated the matter seriously and conducted an investigation led by an external expert, a QC who specialises in labour and employment law” when the complaint was raised in 2017.
“Many of the claims were not substantiated by the external investigation. Where breaches of AMP’s code of conduct were found appropriate consequences were applied,” the company said.
“Prior to Mr Pahari’s appointment as AMP Capital CEO, the AMP board and CEO reviewed the matter and the investigation findings and were satisfied the investigation was thorough and the consequences applied were both significant and appropriate.”
