The Truth About Holborn Assets & Holborn Property Investments

In this chapter, I am going to detail events that transpired post termination. As with the previous blogs, this will only contain information that is 100% true in substance and fact as to avoid further legal threats and accusations of defamation. Additionally a number of conversations took place post termination via a variety of methods including WhatsApp chats set up with “disappearing messages”, luckily I screenshot these before the content vanished! I will also answer the question I’ve been asked countless time, “How the f*** do they get away with this?”

I’ve been round long enough to know when something isn’t right, so as with all the previous material I have published, I have hard copies to evident every single claim. I can only assume their was a last minute attempt from Holborn to circumvent this all system access was revoked immediately and never reinstated despite demands that I work a “30 day notice period”, coincidentally the email from the CEO terminating my employment with zero reason has since disappeared from my inbox.

I have also been warned by previous & current senior members of staff about information being fabricated and manufactured, something I will delve deeply into in my guest blog.

Following my immediate termination email from the CEO, I was then sent the following from “Human Resources” on 28th September 2022. I feel there is a requirement at this stage to use the term, Human Resources/HR loosely, due to a distinct lack of any procedures.

Email from (Human Resources Associate);

“Dear (My name),

Further to the email from (CEO Name), please see attached the official letter of termination.

During the period of notice from today’s date until the 28th October 2022 please ensure you return everything that is Holborn’s including but not exclusively, emails pertinent to current work, handover of current work, contracts, agreements and anything that relates to your period with Holborn.

Wishing you best of luck in your future endeavors.

Thank you

Attached to the email above, was a PDF of a letter containing the following information.

“Dear (My name),
We write to you for and on behalf of Holborn Assets. This letter is to confirm that we will be ceasing your contract with Holborn Assets with immediate effect. Further to this, the contractual relationship is being terminated.
We will accept a one-month hand over up to the end of October. We request that you hand over in an orderly fashion all current work, contacts, agreements, and anything relating to the Holborn Property Division and your work with that Division.
You must not contact, communicate, or meet with any of our clients, suppliers, employees, competitors, officers, or representatives, without the Company’s prior permission from today’s date. You should also ensure that any documents which relate to your work are returned, whether hard copy or on your computer.
Should this be completely satisfacttory, all commissions due to you on commissions paid to Holborn till end of October will be paid to you.
The Directors of Holborn thank you for your service and wish you well for your future.
Should you have any queries please let me know.
Yours faithfully,”

I responded to the above communication with the following;

“Hi all, 

Reference the below. You have removed all access to systems and emails.

I dont understand how I’m expected to complete tasks with no access to anything? 

Please advise. 

Regards“

This was sent via email to HR Associate and Holborn Assets Operation mailbox. No parties replied or offered an explanation.

As with the previous blog, I have never been given an explanation for my immediate termination, other than being described as a scapegoat by a senior member of Holborn staff stating, “you were made a scapegoat because things aren’t going as planned with (MD Holborn Property)”. As I was warned, I am expecting Holborn Assets to fabricate the reasons post dismissal ahead of employment tribunal.

WhatsApp communication with Finance Director – 12th October 2022

Following my immediate termination, cancelled wages and instantly changed terms, I was then contacted by the FINANCE DIRECTOR on 12th October 2022 via WhatsApp, requesting a meeting to go over some commission related matters. I had not had any notification that they were cancelling my wages on 27th September, so at first I assumed it was relating to that. However, the request was as follows;

“Hi (my name), its (Finance Director name) – FD at Holborn. I hope you are well.

I would like to have a meeting with you to go over some commission-related matters relating to the property division.

Are you able to meet today, say at 4.30pm UAE time (1.30pm UK time)? Alternatively, I can do tomorrow at 12pm UAE time (9am UK time) as well. Please let me know what suits you and I will send an MS Teams invite accordingly.

Thanks“

I responded to the Finance Director and asked him to clarify the following, “Can you please confirm what these “commission related matters” are? Does this relate to the 4 emails that I sent to the commission team that were ignored? Or the payment Holborn cancelled 2 weeks ago to avoid paying me commissions owed from the previous week? Or the commission Holborn is currently withholding? Or is this unrelated to what I am owed?

I then received the following response;

“I requested the meeting mainly to gain an understanding of how the property teams general invoicing and commission-related dealings with the developers have worked so far, and to discuss some queries relating to Prosperity.”

I then reiterated my points raised in my previous message, that Holborn had cancelled the commission payment on my A.C from the previous week, that Holborn were withholding all outstanding commission, the commission team were ignoring multiple emails from me.

I then stated, as the Finance Director for Holborn Assets he must be familiar with my points that I have raised. I also requested that he offer some clarity or an explanation.

This message was read on the 13th October 2022 at 10:15am. The finance director refused to respond to my message or answer any of the points that I raised.

WhatsApp communication with Chief Commercial officer – 28th October 2022

I contacted the Chief Commercial Officer via WhatsApp at 15:12 on 28th October with a screenshot of an email I sent that had been ignored. This read;

“Hi (CCO name) sorry to bother you so late on a Friday. Sent the email above yesterday morning. No reply and no payment. Comms team have ignored a number of emails from me, so I dont expect a reply. In addition (CEO name) already cancelled one lot of commission payment. Do you know if I am being paid or not as I hae IRO 44k on pending. Cheers.“

I then received an apology and a message to say he had no idea what is happening, but he would send my message on and try to find out for me. I then received a further message with the following, (I assume this has been copy and paste from a message he received from a 3rd party).

“Given what happened with (previous head of property name) we are having a legal letter drawn up, it’s not a delay from our side for any nefarious reasons…”

“Here you go (my name). You can expect to hear something very soon”

I requested clarity on what this actually meant and was advised;

“I expect it means they want this letter to finalise everything before they release the money” ** I will refer back to this point in the section relating to Blackmail and “leaver NDA’s” **

I went on to explain, “its been 5 weeks though (CCO name), and only now legal letters are being drawn up? (CEO name) cancelled my commission owed from the previous week which were deals done in April. There was no reason or explanation for this. My 30 day notice period ended this week . I don’t understand how they can claim “its not a delay”.

I then received the following response;

“Said it’s with the lawyers but should be sent imminently.”

“Saying it’s not a delay their side. Obviously I can’t comment I’ve no idea when they sent it”.

This correspondence and legal letters have never been sent to me.

Email communication – 28th September 2022 onwards

There has been a common theme in my attempted communication with Holborn Assets. Ignorance!

(detail volume of emails. number of parties. dates etc)

Change of terms and leavers NDAs.

Since publishing my blog, I’ve been contacted by a number of ex-Holborn staff also sharing their past experience with the company. As eluded to above, their appears to be a common practice when employees leave the business.

I was never sent my paperwork that was “with the lawyers”, thus was never paid what I am owed or contacted post dismissal.

The standard practice is for Holborn to immediately change your salary payment terms from, weekly to, “after one month”, with no notice whatsoever. They will cancel any salary/commission payments due in that week. Essentially accumulating a small pot of around 6-7 weeks worth of pay.

In order to receive this, you MUST SIGN AN NDA and agree to waive any rights to future claims. As a result, their public image of marketing themselves as “good honest Christians” and a “family run business” is maintained.

The NDA – Obligations. Obligations. Obligations.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have “found” an unsigned and recently dated version of the Holborn Assets NDA, detailing its terms and also outlining the companies threats and legal consequences. It states the following;

Dear (Name),

We write to you for and on behalf of Holborn Assets (hereinafter referred to as the -company”).

This letter serves the purpose of acknowledging receipt and acceptance of your resignation from your position. Further to this, the contractual relationship is being terminated, effective from “DD-MM-YYY”, and according to our records this date was your last day in the office.

Whilst wishing you the best of luck in your future endeavours, The Company would like to draw your attention to your obligations post-termination. You are obliged to fully adhere to said obligations, as well as, the legal consequences which may ensue by way of non-compliance.

Upon termination of your contractual relationship, you shall not hold yourself out or allow yourself to be held out as being in any way connected with the Company, This shall include, but will not be limited to social media profiles both personal and professional such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedln, In pursuance to this, you will need to ensure that no social media sites have you listed down as representing the Company. You are hereby being granted 5 business days from the date of this letter to change any and all social media profiles that portray your association to the Company. Kindly send an email to hr@holbornassets.com once these have been effectively changed.

A salient obligation is that of confidentiality, which shall consist of both Company and client information (whether actual or prospective clients) and trade secrets. The duty to safeguard, and prohibition from copying, d1vulging, misappropriating, reproducing or disclosing confidential Information and trade secrets (which shall constitute the Company’s sole property), shall ensure that the Companys proprietary information is not used and exploited, in any manner whatsoever, Additionally, the Agreement explicitly holds that upon termination, you are obliged to instantly delete or return all confidential information and copies thereof to the Company, Failure to fully comply with these material terms shall constitute a fundamental breach of the Agreement.

The duty not to solicit, in any manner whatsoever, the Company’s employees and/or clients, whether actual or prospective, is an inherent obligation. In order to safeguard the Company’s legitimate business and legal interests, you are expressly prohibited from using or exploiting any proprietary information in order to solicit Company clientele and/or employees for your own personal benefit or the benefit of any authorised third party.

You should also be aware of the introduction of GDPR in the EU, which carries provisions that require businesses to protect personal data and privacy of EU citizens for transactions that occur within EU member states. The GDPR also regulates the exportation of personal outside the EU, including Data theft. The GDPR includes a mandatory personal data breach notification regime on organisations where GDPR compliance is applicable.

The Company takes its obligations under the GDPR extremely seriously. Any evidence of personal Data breaches or theft of client Data will obviously not be tolerated and will be reported to the relevant supervisory authority (which Is compulsory} and will likely include the filing of a criminal report in support.

The mandatory notification regime applies to all Data breaches and will be applicable to any employee, including post termination.

We trust these obligations are fully understood.

Professional regards

HR Department

Cue further “copyright infringement” complaints.