Google’s VP Singhal left with $45 million golden parachute despite sexual misconduct case – report
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, agreed to pay up to $45 million to retiring senior executive Amit Singhal, after its own probe ruled that sexual misconduct claims against him were “credible,” a new lawsuit shows.
The exuberant amount of money paid to Singhal was revealed on Monday in an amended lawsuit, filed by shareholders against Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in which it was accused of “disregarding, covering up, and rewarding the malfeasance” of its senior executives while handling sexual misconduct cases.
Amit Singhal, 50, retired from his position as Google’s senior vice president for its search operations in 2016. But last year the media reported that he was due to get “millions of dollars” as part of a golden parachute deal, despite having quit the company following misconduct claims levelled against him.
According to the document, a year before that, he grabbed an employee at a “boozy off-site event.” An internal investigation found that the VP was drunk during the accident, and the allegations against him were “credible.” Nevertheless, Alphabet’s leadership greenlit a generous separation agreement: Singhal was awarded payments of $30 million in the two years after leaving Google. On top of that, the former VP would later get from $5 to $15 million during the third year after his exit, if not employed by a competitor.
Upon his retirement, Amit Singhal was described as an “incredibly powerful figure” within Google. The failure to disclose the allegations of misconduct later jeopardized his career in Uber, where he was sacked from a senior position in engineering. Citing sources, Recode reported that Uber did an “extensive” background check on Singhal when it initially hired him but failed to uncover the circumstances of him leaving Google.
Singhal was not immediately available for comment to the media on Monday, but previously he has denied the claims against him.
Despite promoting itself as a ‘woke’ and forward-thinking company, Google has been repeatedly accused of a ‘toxic’ workplace environment with sexual harassment prevalent within the company. In one instance, the tech giant reportedly signed off on a $90 million exit package for the head of its Android division, Andy Rubin, also accused of sexual misconduct (which he denied).
The company said that it is stepping up the fight against workplace harassment and has taken “an increasingly hard line on inappropriate conduct by people in positions of authority.”
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