Former Alvarion controller: I was fired after exposing fraud

"Alvarion is paying millions of shekels to vendors without auditing and there are severe discrepancies in employees' salaries."

Ory Pinco, a former financial controller at Alvarion Ltd. (Nasdaq: ALVR; TASE: ALVR), is suing the company for more than NIS 500,000, claiming that she was illegally fired after three months on the job after she exposed corruption and embezzlement. She was employed at the company between April and July 2008.

Pinco filed her statement of claim with the Tel Aviv District Labor Court yesterday. She claims that she was fired after discovering "improper conduct to the point of administrative fraud and actual embezzlement." She said that Alvarion was paying millions of shekels to vendors without auditing and that there were severe discrepancies in employees' salaries.

Pinco alleges that Alvarion and its managers cynically exploited, and continue to exploit, their authority for personal purposes, and acted mendaciously and unfairly in all matters relating to the good of the company's shareholders. She accuses the managers of whitewashing and concealing flaws in the company's financial oversight mechanisms, and that they used shareholders' money as their own. She further claims that she tried to correct the lack of oversight and corruption, but was prevented from obtaining essential information for carrying out her job properly.

Pinco claims that she was automatically and arbitrarily fired with no material reason, as part of the company's revolving door of systematic layoffs, the purpose of which was to conceal the truth.

Pinco is asking the court to order Alvarion to compensate her for being illegally fired and for breach of her labor contract. She is demanding NIS 517,000 for 14 monthly salaries plus benefits, on the basis of a gross monthly salary of NIS 21,000. Her contract stipulates that she was also eligible for a NIS 42,000 annual performance fee, subject to meeting targets.

Alvarion said in response, "The company was surprised to hear about the filing of the statement of claim, about which it was unaware, and about the allegations made by the claimant. The claimant was employed by the company for only three months, and as she well knows, and as will be made clear during the legal proceedings, she was fired for material reasons."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 28, 2008

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008

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