A sacked software salesman has alleged his ex-boss had a “side deal” with a distributor with a “history of corruption” and approved a “crazy” €500,000 discount on technology being licensed in a deal to supply the Saudi government.
The salesman, Ali Izzy, made the claims as he testified to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Wednesday in Cork on his complaints under the Protected Disclosures Act 2014 and the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against his ex-employer, SolarWinds Software Europe DAC.
Mr Izzy was sacked from his nearly €200,000-a-year job as an IT sales rep after a company disciplinary officer agreed with his manager’s complaint that he had committed “insubordination” by revoking a discount on a deal worth hundreds of thousands of euro on June 30th, 2024.
SolarWinds, the tribunal has heard, is a provider of network monitoring technology, which it sells via third-party distributors wholesaling its products to partner companies bidding on contracts with end users.
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The claimant alleged his boss, Middle East regional sales director Abdul Rehman, had approved an “unnecessary and unjustified” 62 per cent discount to the benefit of the distributor – with his employer, then a publicly traded company, losing out by “more than €500,000”.
The tribunal heard Mr Izzy started work on a package in the second quarter of 2023 to meet requirements posted to the Saudi Arabian government tendering website Etiadd, by the Ministry of Energy there.
Mr Izzy said one of SolarWinds’ wholesale distributors in Saudi Arabia was “financially struggling” in 2023 and that its account was “on hold” from March to November that year.
Mr Izzy said he believed Mr Rehman “leaked” the prices he had set on the package to the distributor, and that his boss had a “side deal” with the distributor, which he claimed had “a history of corruption and bribery”.
His evidence was that the same firm had attempted to bribe him with a sum of €10,000 in the first quarter of 2021 – and that the overture was made on behalf of the distributor by a different former SolarWinds employee, who left the company a number of years ago.
He said he raised the alleged bribe attempt with Mr Rehman initially in October 2023 when his boss visited the Cork offices for the first time. He went to the company’s legal department about it the following month, he said.
Mr Rehman told the WRC in evidence on Tuesday he left Solar Winds at the end of August because he “got a better opportunity in a different company”.
He accepted that Mr Izzy approached him and told him he had been offered a bribe by the distributor. “He has to go through to official HR channels. It has nothing to do with me,” he said.
Mark Harty SC, appearing for Mr Izzy with David Byrnes BL, instructed by Gráinne O’Donovan of Douglas Law, asked Mr Rehman: “Did you ever get offered a bribe by [the distributor]?”
“No,” Mr Rehman said.
Mr Rehman had said discounts on such deals could “go up to 90 per cent” in the Middle East and that once VAT and professional services were accounted for it was “not a very significant jump”.
[ RTÉ presenter tells tribunal he overheard order to cut editor’s shiftsOpens in new window ]
“He lied, unfortunately,” Mr Izzy said when that evidence was put to him. “I hadn’t given 90 per cent in my whole life.”
He said the normal range for a distributor discount was 20 to 35 per cent, and that Mr Rehman did not have the authority to give a 62 per cent discount.
Asked by Mary Fay BL, who was instructed for the company by law firm Arthur Cox, why he didn’t report the alleged 2021 bribe attempt earlier, Mr Izzy said: “I wasn’t connected with other teams at the time. I was fresh, just joined an international company. I didn’t know the rules, how to work things. At the time, we hadn’t taken any type of training about corruption, about compliance.”
He said the ex-employee “gave it by hand” and that due to the individual’s seniority he felt he “couldn’t report that at the time because I would definitely be penalised”.
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He was dismissed on July 22nd, 2024, following a second disciplinary process on foot of Mr Rehman’s complaint of insubordination in connection with the Ministry of Energy deal pricing.
Mr Izzy told the WRC he had applied for “more than 100” jobs since his dismissal, but had been unable to find new employment.
He said Mr Rehman had written to ex-SolarWinds partner companies “informing them in a way that I was dismissed due to misconduct”. He said his reputation had been “ruined” as a result of the company’s actions.
The company’s lawyers confirmed to the tribunal that Mr Izzy had been earning €197,062 a year when he was dismissed.
Mr Izzy, who still lives in Cork, confirmed to the hearing that he had been reduced to doing food deliveries on Uber and JustEat, as he was “desperate” to support his family, but had to stop for medical reasons after a month.
Adjudicator Tom O’Riordan indicated that he would hear closing submissions at a later date.
SolarWinds, which employs several hundred people at its international headquarters in Cork City, was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange until February this year, when it was acquired by a private equity firm.
