- Victimized employee fired from Woori in the light of litigation… Severe crime dismissed by Woori Bank in a Korean corporate style manner… Woori’s appeal overturned by court… Korean American residents outraged at Woori’s actions to cover up crime…
In New York, the local court in Manhattan has dismissed an attempt by Woori Bank to dismiss the court and block litigation against one of its Korean employees who has been accused of sexually harassing one of his Korean American staff at the firm. Despite the rejection of the court, Woori Bank has once again appealed to the court in hopes of dismissing the case before any continuation of the litigation. The succession of events has spurred much outrage against Woori by Korean residents in New York City.
On the 17th of last month, in an effort to cover up a sexual harassment crime allegedly committed by Woori Bank branch manager, one of Woori’s Korean personnel in New York, against one of his staff, Woori appealed to dismiss the court and block a law suit on the grounds of sexual harassment and unfair dismissal according to both the court and a local law firm named Kim & Bae. However, court has recently overturned the appeal and plans on proceeding with the suit only to find that Woori has once again filed another appeal to dismiss litigation. Moreover, ever since the first days of the law suit, Woori Bank has continued to state that everything is a misunderstanding and that there was no sexual harassment involved.
Currently, the locals in New York City are taking Woori’s actions as very exceptional in this type of lawsuit, and have even been surprised by Woori’s persistent efforts to block litigation. This may be due to the fact that sexual harassment is an extremely severe crime in the United States, and that defendants rarely try to escape punishment in cases of sexual harassment.
Therefore, considering Woori tried to prevent legal action altogether in the first place upon claims of sexual harassment, it can be inferred that this was an attempt to simply avoid bad publicity, and all the while, Woori’s actions are being continually criticized by the local Korean American community.
On last June 2014, Woori Bank was involved itself with sex and loan scandals in major cities around the world. Two contract employees filed a lawsuit in New York Criminal Court against Woori Bank New York Branch for being harassed for revealing sexual harassment at work, asking for US$3.5 million (3.58 billion won) from the main branch in Seoul.
In September 2012, a male employee dispatched from the main branch allegedly sexually harassed two local female employees. To make things worse, he also allegedly escalated his actions to the level of sexual assault two months later.
The female employees also said that the alleged often physically and verbally harassed them and gave excuses like he was drunk or that it happens all the time in Korean banks.
The alleged harasser was called back to the main office in Seoul prematurely after the victims notified the main branch about the incidents. The two female employees were soon subjected to a steady stream of requests to do work outside of their initial job description, or given no tasks at all.
The deputy for the plaintiff said, “The compensation of US$3.5 million is the minimum amount we are asking, and we also asked the members of the jury for punitive damages separately,” and “If the jury thinks the case is serious enough, the amount Woori Bank will pay could be astronomical.”
Prior to this case, the branch manager of the Tokyo branch of Woori Bank committed suicide during an investigation into 61 billion won (US$5.98 million) of illegal loans made at his branch.
Now that the funeral for the dead branch manager is all wrapped up, Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) is going to continue with the investigation into this case. It is going to zone in on whether he had received rebates or other types of valuables.
The serious problem is that Woori Bank continues to appeal court dismissal against employee molestation trial in order to block litigation because they are worrying only about image wrecked.
Officer of Woori Bank stated “We don’t any comment about the trial since the court is not closed”.
