A British businessman, Ian Clayton-Smith, has sued a Nigerian-born entrepreneur, Cynthia Tooley, in a civil case at Luton County Court over alleged theft of £12,258 from his company.
Tooley was accused of stealing the money from a cosmetic firm she worked for.
According to Daily Mail UK, the 70-year-old founder of B-Fab UK Limited, told the court that Tooley stole the money six years ago.
“The court heard that Ms Tooley was appointed head of e-commerce at the company in April 2019 on a salary of £55,000, plus a 5% bonus on any monthly sales she achieved above £150,000,” the report said.
The court heard that she set up an Amazon merchant account after that, and on two occasions, she took money from the account for her salary and bonus and emailed an invoice to Clayton-Smith during the 2019 Christmas period.
Also, the 42-year-old woman allegedly set up an account for the company with the United States online bank, Square, to deal with US sales, but in January 2020, the account was frozen for 90 days over an anomaly.
Clayton-Smith said in his witness statement that he and Tooley “started a personal relationship on or around June 2019.”
He added, “The defendant was clearly told, on multiple occasions, that the claimant and the management team saw her unauthorised payment to herself as theft.”
However, Tooley denied the allegation and told the court that she had been paying herself in the company before, and nobody raised an objection.
“I had paid myself before in the same way, and no one had ever quibbled it. It was money I was entitled to claim,” she said.
The Nigerian woman and her estranged husband, who is the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, had marital issues that led to their separation in 2024.
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