David Noakes, chief executive of the pharma company in Guernsey, Channel Islands, was ordered by an employment tribunal to pay £10,500 ($15,200) to his former PA Lucia Pagliarone.
Pagliarone told the tribunal after she was hired, she found her CV in a pile of papers and Noakes had written on it “Red lipstick, heels, tattoos, do not approve; wearing a dress excellent.”
She also said he had commented about another interviewee, “Well we can’t hire her as she is ugly and overweight and I only employ beautiful women.”
Injection allegations
The tribunal said Pagliarone had suffered verbal harassment but there was not enough evidence to prove unfair dismissal from her £40,000 ($61,000)-per-year job. The administrative worker claimed she was fired in part for raising concerns about the legality of her administering injections to the company’s clients without medical training. She said Noakes told her if the police raided the company she should say the injectables were a staff product for personal use.
Immuno Biotech denied that giving injections was part of Pagliarone’s duties. The tribunal found there was no evidence her protests about the matter contributed to her dismissal, but said the company’s failure to investigate was “worrying”, and that during her time there, Immuno Biotech was “a company without any documented policies or procedures that an employee could refer to.”
MHRA raid
Immuno Biotech makes GcMAF, which it describes as “an essential human protein our bodies make that removes a number of diseases including cancer.” It also claims to be able to treat autism in as little as five days and has petitioned to have the UK MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) disbanded.
Immuno’s labs in Cambridgeshire, UK were raided in February and blood plasma materials used to make GcMAF were found to be labelled “not to be administered to humans or used in any drug products.”