By Kirstin Ridley
LONDON (Reuters) - A former Credit Suisse (SIX:CSGN) banker, who was convicted and sentenced to prison in Romania for a decade for alleged espionage in 2013, has lost an attempt to revive an $86 million London claim against the Swiss bank for lost earnings.
Vadim Benyatov, a former head of European emerging markets focused on energy sector privatisations, argued that Credit Suisse owed him compensation because he had been wrongfully convicted while doing his job and, since being made redundant in 2015, had been unable to find work because of his conviction.
But the Court of Appeal on Friday dismissed his claim, arguing employers could not be liable for staff suffering serious misfortune or injustice at the hands of a third party simply because they happened to be doing their job at the time.
Senior judges agreed there was a "fundamental disparity in the economic positions" of an employer and an employee, but that this was addressed by duties of care and employment protection legislation.
"It does not justify making the employer, in effect, the employee's insurer in respect of all harm suffered in consequence of his work," they said in the judgment.
Lawyers for Benyatov did not respond to a request for comment. Credit Suisse welcomed the court's decision.
The case was being closely watched by employment lawyers because it raised questions about the nature and extent of the risk to which employees can be exposed.
Benyatov, who earned 450,000 pounds ($537,000) plus bonuses per year, was arrested alongside two colleagues in 2006 in connection with a Romanian privatisation. He was jailed for 56 days before being tried and convicted in 2013 in absentia for alleged espionage and membership of an organised criminal group.
Credit Suisse, which originally agreed his conduct had been in line with accepted business practice, supported and paid for his defence and appeals, including to the European Court of Human Rights. His sentence, which he has not served, was cut to four-and-a-half years in 2015.
But the bank challenged his claims of duty of care breaches, negligence and causation of loss and damage.
($1 = 0.8382 pounds)