A Toronto-born businesswoman testified before a London tribunal that she believed her former boss, a multi-millionaire banker in London, hired someone to have her killed.
As the Toronto Star
reports, Jordan Wimmer, a 29-year-old financier is in the midst of $7 million suit against Mark Lowe.
Last year, Wimmer made a base salary of $175,000 (CDN), plus an $830,000 (CDN) bonus.
Wimmer joined Lowe's hedge fun, Nomos Capital, in 2003. Five years later her salary had increased so she was making well over $1 million annually. She had also been offered a directorship.
When Mister Lowe's counsel Elizabeth Melville asked Miss Wimmer how she could feel demeaned and harassed by a man who was treating her so generously, Wimmer
answered, “He was also calling me a stupid blonde and a stupid bimbo."
Throughout her testimony yesterday, Miss Wimmer painted a portrait of a boss who was inherently chauvinistic and dismissive of women. She testified, “It's really sad to say, but he has this portraiture of women as objects he can just buy like handbags or designer dresses which are meant to be just thrown around and bought on occasion.”
She also testified accused Lowe of publicly saying she “Needed to work more and dress less.”
On numerous occasions, she says he compelled her to listen to his descriptions of his sexual escapades, or the attributes of his various lovers.
During cross-examination, Melville suggested Miss Wimmer was nothing but a "gold digger."
“That is rubbish. This was something that I have held inside me and is incredibly, incredibly humiliating,” Miss Wimmer responded.
Melville stepped back and confirmed the key issue was Miss Wimmer's workload, under Mister Lowe, had become onerous and that stress and exhaustion spiraled into a total meltdown in the spring of 2008
Melville proceeded to read her items out of her
daily agenda for that period.
The agenda included notes indicating she had an “awesome” trip to Dubai, and “partied like a rock star” in Paris. In one three-day period, she was out every night to at least one event, if not two.
Melvile concluded, “If you were exhausted it was not by reason of work was it?”
Miss Wimmer replied, “I put up a front, I buckled in private and put up a public face.”
Wimmer adamantly maintained throughout cross-examination that her boss had repeatedly threatened to have her killed.
Asked directly by
Melvile, “Is it your belief Mister Lowe was getting a Russian hitman or member of his family to kill you?” Wimmer answered simply "Yes."
The case continues.
