When Sirius Split Into 3 Companies (or Shells) Without Telling Staff
Filed under: Summary: Today we begin to tell the story about a company that went astray, routinely lied to the staff, and even forced staff to sign bogus contracts under false pretenses
THE last part showed that Sirius ‘Open Source’ had begun ‘hiding’ behind Carbon Accounting, impeding potential lawsuits against the company — a company that now lacks an address and hides the address of its managers as well (one is in fiscal ‘exile’). We have good reasons to suspect that the company has many more skeletons in its closet; it would help explain unpaid and overdue bills (suppliers).
We’ve decided to cover contract-signing and related E-mails in two sub-parts, seeing that the subject may take a while to cover/digest and would likely overwhelm readers if covered in one day. Hence, today we’ll give the gist of the story about the new ‘shell’ of Sirius Corporation, Sirius ‘Open Source’. The next part will present some pertinent, original evidence. The public and even former Sirius employees ought to see it. It might alarm some of them.
To be very clear, “joining” Sirius ‘Open Source’ wasn’t up for debate. It was compulsory because of a contract-signing ritual they hadn’t bothered telling us about! I kept asking questions about it, but I was not receiving honest answers. That was 4 years ago! Things have not improved since then. Despite what was said in E-mail invitations, we did not receive any substantial training and we have good reasons to believe it was a “cover” for something else. In the invitations they didn’t include the contract-signing in the agenda (we’ll show evidence in the next part) and didn’t include the new contract, so they had us sign it blindly on the spot with threats if we don’t do so. In other words, under peer and time pressure we were made to agree to a contract not presented to us properly; the correct protocol is, send in advance or give it some time for a lawyer to check before consent (“implied consent” under pressure does not qualify).
As noted at the top, it’s probably too late to take action over this because the company is more or less ‘hiding’. The company did not give us a copy of the contact afterwards, so we don’t have a copy of what we actually signed. It was ad hoc and dodgy, so basically it’s like in the movies where they say “just sign below the dotted line”.
We said we would go to the company’s office for training and self-appraisal but the real purpose was signing a new contract, not presented in advance. That contract was for a new company, not the company that existed since 1998 (and has listed only one member of staff for years already; he meanwhile created Sirius Open Source Inc. in the US).
It should be noted that all this happened a month before a shell was created in the US after Gates Foundation had paid the CEO. This “training and workshop” meeting was clearly a decoy as they never mentioned signing of a contract with a new company. We’ll show the correspondence tomorrow. Any attempt to not attend the meeting was quickly met with threats from management. Wait for the E-mails to be shown, as careful redaction will be needed. Yes, they almost blackmailed everyone into coming under the guise of “training from [redacted]” — something that barely even happened! In other words, the real purpose was not spoken about; the real intention was to get us to sign some papers without telling us the reason. I asked about it (face to face) and they declined to comment. I remember this clearly. This was rather dodgy, even back then, not just in retrospect. They would pull us in one at a time for a ‘chat’ and then ask us to sign papers. This isn’t just some sneaky means of legal manipulation, it’s very likely unlawful, but no legal advisor was present and no record of the meeting was made, just a signature. So we (re)joined a company worth 1 pound! Yes, not kidding! We all signed up to join a new company with no assets. Meanwhile the absent CEO (hiding in another country, probably dodging financial liabilities) was failing to tell us he and a partner registered a third company; they operate in the US, at least on paper sometimes, so some people need to double-task in office hours in the US (evening in the UK). This whole “double job” situation (more duties, as it’s like we’re working in two virtual companies) didn’t mean increase in pay but greater uncertainty. We were meant to be covering up deception (pretending to be a US company) in addition to the technical work getting worse and worse.
It should be noted that Rianne’s contract (typically weekend cover) does not include lunch break, which is strange and legally dubious. Moreover, if you expand and cover also the US, then amend the contract accordingly. But at this point the company was likely operating outside the rules already. Anybody who works as a Support Engineer and also performs helpdesk tasks (as nobody works in weekends in the US) is suddenly put on a dedicated line for Reception in the US. The job itself changed.
It’s probably too late to hold the company legally accountable, but if the “court of public opinion” counts for anything, then today and tomorrow we objectively tell what happened.
fter two more days of failure to respond (for the second time already, spanning over one week!) I’ve decided to name and shame Aviva.
O it’s finally time!