A British Olympic fencer’s wife claims she lost her job after she accused her jewellery tycoon ex-husband of stealing £90,000 from his disabled brother’s trust fund, an employment tribunal hears.
Eleanor Belson alleges Tim got rid of her from his firm in Hatton Garden, London as an ‘act of revenge’ after she reported him over suspicions of money laundering, financial abuse and embezzlement.
The central London employment tribunal heard Mrs Belson worked for her husband’s firm Jewellery Validation Services – trading as Prestige Valuations – as a financial controller for five years.
However, following the breakdown of their 15 year marriage last year, she was made redundant in February 2022.
At the preliminary hearing judgement into her unfair dismissal case released today her lawyers also said he misrepresented the value of his businesses to fool investors and stole £91,500 from his brother, care home resident John Belson.
Mr Belson, a former fencing champion, disputes these claims as ‘complete nonsense’ and says their mutual divorce agreement was ‘derailed’ after she bought a property with her partner for £1.15million, meaning she would owe him a £400,000 settlement.
Employment Judge Jill Burns had to assess at this preliminary hearing whether Mrs Belson was entitled to ‘interim relief’ by deciding if her claim was likely to succeed on the face of it.
The judge said she was not making any assessment as to whether Mrs Belson’s claims of criminality were true. However, she accepted she had made them.
The judge ruled at this stage the case could go either way.
She concluded: ‘I noted that Mr Kjellin’s statement appeared to support Mr Belson’s assertion that the divorce settlement negotiations had broken down very close to the date of dismissal.
‘On that basis, the breakdown in the divorce negotiations appeared to be the most proximate event to the dismissal, rather than any of the alleged protected disclosures.
‘That tended to support the [company’s] contention that the reason or principal reason for dismissal was indeed the breakdown of divorce negotiations activating a previously agreed dismissal for redundancy.
‘At this stage, I considered that the [company’s] contention that redundancy was the reason for [Mrs Belson’s] dismissal was as likely to succeed as [Mrs Belson’s] case that her protected disclosures were the principal reason for her dismissal.’
Mrs Belson’s request for interim relief – an order by an Employment Tribunal for someone taking their employer to a tribunal to continue to be paid until their case is decided – was refused.
The case will now progress to a further hearing.