A fired LVMH executive - accused of misconduct including giving a colleague the middle finger - is suing Moët Hennessy for 1.7 million ($2 million), saying he was really ousted for flagging sanctions-busting sales to Russia, not his management style.
Kenneth Kralick, who led online sales for the wines and spirits division of LVMH, says his boss turned against him after blowing the whistle in April 2023 on an alleged parallel distribution system channeling products through the US to Russia.
“That’s when the real difficulties began,” his lawyer Marine Le Conte told the Paris tribunal on Thursday. She argued he was harassed in the run-up to his dismissal a year later. His remit was cut back and his boss deliberately ran meetings in French - a language Kralick doesn’t speak.
Moët Hennessy’s attorney, Pascal Delignières, said the Russian sales channel suspicions don’t stand up. He said Kralick was instead dismissed after an internal probe into his conduct as a manager based on initial complaints from staffers.
According to Delignières, the investigation found Kralick raised his middle finger at a colleague during a meeting of about 50 staff and told another he’d buy her “a pair of Louboutin shoes” if she met her targets.
Kralick denies the first incident ever happened and doesn’t recall the second, adding that no witness has corroborated what he acknowledges would have been a tactless remark if true.
The dispute coincides with a management shake up earlier this year at Moët...
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