Cleaner who filmed colleagues 'weaponised employment laws' in 'scandalous' compensation bids
Share:
A cleaner who tried to “extort” a luxury London hotel chain out of £19,000 has been revealed as a serial abuser of the UK’s employment laws. Martin Kumi worked just four shifts as a Night House Steward on cleaning duties at the 5* Londoner hotel in Leicester Square before he was dismissed.
He then mounted an employment tribunal claim against Edwardian Pastoria Hotels Ltd, alleging racial and disability discrimination, harassment, and unfair dismissal. Kumi had secretly recorded his hotel colleagues during his brief working stint in July 2023, and deployed some of the tapes as part of his legal claim.
But the case was thrown out by a judge, who laid bare how Kumi has a history of “weaponsing” the tribunal system in repeated attempts to get money from employers. An excoriating ruling from Central London Employment Tribunal sets out how Kumi, upon being hired for a job, sets in motion a pre-planned attempt to gather evidence for a compensation claim.
He uses secret cameras to record conversations with co-workers, and sometimes attempts to “entrap” them into making “unguarded” remarks, said Employment Judge Richard Baty. In 2021, Kumi made a failed bid for a £20,000 payout from Nando’s, with a tribunal concluding he had a fixed intention of gathering evidence for a compensation claim when he was first hired.
In 2023, another of Kumi’s legal claims - this time against University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust - failed due to weak evidence, while Kumi’s £50,000 compensation claim against Birkin Cleaning Services, where he worked for just two days, was dismissed as “frivolous”.
