A London Banker Was Fired for ‘Stealing’ a Bike Part Worth $6.50. So He Sued 

(Bloomberg) -- A former Mizuho Bank Ltd. executive -- who was fired for taking a part from a bicycle in the company storage shed -- is suing the bank, saying it used the episode as a “convenient way” to get rid of him after he complained about bullying and potential regulatory breaches.

Marius Caracota, who worked as a relationship manager for the Japanese bank in London, admits taking a chain guard from a colleague’s bicycle in November 2016, an incident that was captured on CCTV footage. But he says he only took the part, worth about five pounds ($6.55), because he was convinced it was his own.

“I believe that I was deliberately hounded out” when the bank saw a chance to “seemingly lawfully dismiss me on grounds of theft,” he said in his filings for the case this week, which is being heard at an employment tribunal in London -- where the chain guard sits in a plastic bag on the witness table.

The bike incident “amounted to gross misconduct,” Simon Miller, the bank’s head of legal and compliance -- who decided to dismiss Caracota -- said in court filings for his testimony on Friday. “I did consider whether a lesser sanction would be suitable” but decided against this because bankers should have a “strong moral compass,” he said.

“Stealing from a colleague was wholly inappropriate and counter to the bank’s values and culture,” Miller said in the filings. A Mizuho spokeswoman declined to comment beyond “the bank denies the allegations.”

‘Inconvenient Nuisance’

Caracota said he was seen as an “inconvenient nuisance employee” because he’d made two sets of complaints -- one accusing a manager of bullying and aggressive behavior, and another saying he hadn’t been registered as an “approved person” with the Financial Conduct Authority, the U.K. regulator, when he thought he should’ve been. Caracota’s role didn’t require him to be registered, Miller said in his filings.

When the bike CCTV footage emerged, Human Resources and compliance managers were already “biased against me in virtue of knowing that I had complained,” Caracota said.

Caracota -- who describes himself as a “cycling enthusiast” -- had lost the chain guard from his Brompton bike, an iconic British folding model with small wheels, and saw one on another bicycle in the parking shed, he said in his filings. The accessory had “distinctive marks” that looked like his own, so he decided to take it back. Chain guards cover the bicycle chain to stop riders from getting grease on their trousers and to protect the chain against the elements.

“If I had been a thief, it would have been madness to do this knowing as I did that the parking had full CCTV surveillance,” Caracota said in the documents. After the incident, he was called into a meeting, shown the footage and ultimately dismissed for gross misconduct, he said, adding that “the whole episode was surreal."

‘Sign of Goodwill’

“I now realize that it would have been wiser to have left a note on the bike.” He said he’d offered to buy a new chain guard “as a sign of goodwill.”

As a “frequent buyer of bicycle items” who had bought 83 bike parts in 2016 alone, he had “absolutely no motive for stealing this item,” he said.

Miller said he stands by his decision to fire Caracota, “and nothing since has made me question if I was right.” Even though the chain guard was cheap, “there can be no de minimis on honesty in a bank,” he said.

Since being dismissed, Caracota has been unable to find a job in the U.K. and has been forced to take a temporary position in France with a firm that hasn’t “asked questions about why I left,” he said in the filings.

U.K. employment tribunal lawsuits have an 83,700-pound ($110,000) cap on damages. Awards are normally limited to that amount unless a former employee can prove they were the victim of discrimination or a whistleblower who’d made a public-interest disclosure.

To contact the reporter on this story: Kaye Wiggins in London at kwiggins4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anthony Aarons at aaarons@bloomberg.net, Christopher Elser

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