The original appeal was not upheld, so the woman took HMRC to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh

An Armenian HMRC trainee who was accused of trying to use her position to ‘kill Russians for killing her family’ has won over £16,000 in compensation.

An employment tribunal heard that the trainee, known only as Ms X, never made comments about ‘getting back at Russians’.

Instead her ‘patronising’ manager invented the comments by making false notes during a private meeting between them.

After disciplining her for the false accusation, an inexperienced appeal officer worsened the allegation by misunderstanding that the trainee had claimed she wanted to ‘kill Russians’ as she was ‘medically paranoid’.

The government organisation has now been ordered to pay the woman £16,506.95 in compensation.

Ms X is an Armenian woman who is from the semi-autonomous state of Abkhazia in Georgia.

She speaks fluent English but her first language is Russian and she speaks with a Russian accent.

She was granted asylum in the UK in 2004 and was naturalised as a citizen shortly after.

Ms X initially began working for HMRC in January 2019 and completed her probation before leaving in January 2020.

She returned as a trainee in July 2022, where Damian Robson was her line manager.

Mr Robson described himself as ‘an empathetic and relaxed manager’, but the tribunal noted his emails to Ms X ‘did not display that’ and were in fact ‘patronising’, ‘hostile’ and ‘inappropriate’.

Ms X had changed her surname in 2019 while previously working for HMRC, as she had a very distinctive surname that ‘identified her as an Armenian from Abkhazia’.

Due to the complicated culture of Ms X’s home country, it is not uncommon for people ‘to intimidate the woman into compliance, where a woman does not behave as expected’, such as when she is unmarried or leaves home.

Ms X had previously suffered ‘a violent attack’ for these reasons and, following advice from police and a lawyer, she subsequently changed her surname in 2019.

But she saw when she re-joined HMRC that her old surname was visible for all 65,000 HMRC employees on its computer system.

Ms X sent an email to Mr Robson to bring this to his attention – but he approached her in the open plan office to ‘question her extensively’ in ‘a disturbing and an unnecessary manner’ as to why she was in danger.

The trainee was apprehensive because of the publicity of the situation in the open plan office but still attempted to explain fully her concerns.

However Mr Robson dismissed them, ‘explained that he had 29 years’ experience in law enforcement, and he could not understand’ and then ‘took no action’ to help her.

Ms X ‘remained very concerned’ but approached HR herself and her old name was removed a month later.

On August 18, the trainees were all added to an online call as it was announced which department they would go to for the next two years.

It was said that these were ‘randomly selected’, leading Ms X to question how the random selection was controlled.

She and another trainee were unhappy with their assignments so asked if they were able to swap, but Mr Robson said the request was ‘perplexing’ and denied the request in a patronising manner.

Ms X and Mr Robson were both part of a scheduled video call the next day, on August 19, and after the call the manager asked her to stay so they could discuss allocation.

During the meeting, Ms X expressed a preference to work in Customs & International Trade.

She said ‘her background in research and analysis would be better suited to that area’, and also that her experience of Russian language and culture might be useful there.

They spoke for almost an hour and Mr Robson took notes without Ms X’s knowledge, which he later compiled into 91 paragraphs of meeting minutes.

Within the six-page document, it described how Ms X had insisted she be put into Customs & International Trade because she ‘could get back at Russia for killing my family’.

Mr Robson sent the notes to the trainee 10 days after their meeting while she was on holiday and she replied that they were ‘not an accurate reflection’ of what was said.

However he used the made-up quote to bring disciplinary action against Ms X, and on September 1, 2022 an investigation was started into her conduct.

A manager was appointing to investigate, though he had never done so before.

Despite having no medical training, the manager used Ms X’s concerns for her own safety as reason to claim she was ‘medically paranoid’.

He then ignored Ms X’s evidence and said that Mr Robson would have no motive to make anything up about her.

He ‘drew a negative inference’ about Ms X because she called Mr Robson a ‘liar’, and even tried to upgrade the investigation against her to say she had committed gross misconduct, which was denied.

He found the accusation regarding ‘getting back at Russians’ proven just because Russian had been mentioned during the meeting.

Ms X was issued a first written warning.

She appealed the decision but a second manager who had no experience in the role was appointed the appeal manager.

This manager ‘conducted an extremely cursory review’, and even substantiated a completely incorrect allegation that Ms X ‘had stated that she would use her position to kill Russians’.

The appeal was not upheld, so Ms X took HMRC to an employment tribunal in Edinburgh.

There, Employment Judge Melanie Sangster concluded that she was the victim of direct and indirect race discrimination.

EJ Sangster said: “If [Ms X] had stated, as [Mr Robson] indicated, that she wished to use her position within [HMRC] to ‘get back at the Russians for killing her family’, the Tribunal concluded that the response from [Mr Robson] would not have been that he would simply ‘leave that comment to one side’ and move on.

“He would, at very least, have expressed shock at the statement and told [Ms X] that what she had stated was entirely inappropriate.”

It was found that Mr Robson had falsely accused Ms X of misconduct because of her race.

The judge continued: “The Tribunal concluded that the other comments, which [Mr Robson] stated [Ms X] said to him in his one-to-one meeting with her on August 19 2022, were not in fact said.

“The Tribunal accordingly concluded that the alleged treatment occurred: [Mr Robson] did falsely accuse [Ms X] of misconduct.

“The Tribunal accordingly finds that, in falsely accusing [Ms X] of misconduct, [HMRC] treated [her] less favourably because of race.”

HMRC has now been ordered to pay Ms X, who continues to work there, £16,506.95 for injury to feelings.

Further claims of harassment related to race were dismissed.