On a Monday in early July, Goldman Sachs’ private wealth management team in London received unexpected news from the bank’s management: a colleague with whom some of them had worked for years would no longer be coming to the office. He had been sent to prison.
Ronan O’Grady, 33, was sentenced to two years in prison by Dublin’s Central Criminal Court in June after pleading guilty to eight counts of sexual assault in February. In the meantime, and since his arrest two years earlier, O’Grady had continued to work at Goldman.sit and socialize with colleagues as usual.
Shortly before he was sentenced, O’Grady informed the bank that he had been convicted of crimes committed between 2004 and 2008, when he was under 18. In the days following his imprisonment, Irish newspapers began reporting his conviction to colleagues, astonishing his co-workers.
The case raises questions about who has the responsibility to inform a person’s employer when someone is arrested, charged or convicted of a crime and what, if anything, employers can do to control such behaviour. In the UK, the fact that a person is charged with a crime is normally public information, as is a conviction. In Ireland, too, convictions are largely a matter of public record.
O’Grady’s conviction came after Irish broadcaster RTÉ also discovered this year that one of its studio heads had continued to work at the company five months after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography.
RTÉ said the broadcaster was completely unaware of the employee’s conviction and had not received any communication from the police about it. Details of O’Grady’s case are based on interviews with several people involved in the situation who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the case. A lawyer for O’Grady declined to comment on behalf of him and his family.
According to the lawyers, if the alleged crime is not related to a person’s work, there is very little that authorities can do without potentially violating privacy. Laws.
“Law enforcement does not routinely inform employers about suspects in investigations,” said Jessica Parker, a criminal defense attorney at Corker Binning. “If a police officer told an employer […] “It could cause real prejudice to his employment in circumstances where the facts are uncertain. It would amount to a serious interference with the suspect’s right to privacy.”
“Following an investigation and a conviction, who should inform the employer – the police, the public prosecutor, the probation service? In some professions, the responsibility falls on the employee,” Parker added.
The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland, which brought the charges against both Goldman and RTÉ defendants declined to comment on individual cases but said they “do not and cannot inform an employer about a defendant facing trial as every defendant is entitled to the constitutional protection of the presumption of innocence”.
However, the fact that both men continued to work after their convictions highlights the difficulties employers face in monitoring such situations. While UK law enforcement agencies have access to the National Police Information System, which contains records of convictions and other problems with the law, it is not easily accessible to businesses. Employers largely have to rely on trust.
“The best thing employers can do is to impose an express obligation (for example, in the employment contract) on individual employees to notify [them] “Unfortunately, this may have limited benefit if an employee ignores the obligation,” said Philippa O’Malley, an employment lawyer at Slaughter and May.
Even when an employee discloses an arrest, it can be difficult for an employer to act without knowing all the facts. The BBC has said it will try recover hundreds of thousands of pounds of convicted radio star Huw Edwards, who was arrested in November and was paid until he resigned in April.
The BBC board said in a statement this month that if Edwards had been truthful about the facts of his arrest, “we would never have continued to pay him public money.” Edwards’ lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At Goldman, employees are required to report any arrests or allegations to the bank as part of its employment policies, something staff must confirm annually, according to a person familiar with the bank’s procedures.
Goldman said in a statement that the bank was “shocked to learn of Mr. O’Grady’s egregious past crimes” and that “Mr. O’Grady concealed these criminal proceedings from us until June 2024, despite being required to disclose them.”
“His employment was terminated when we became aware of this. Our thoughts are with the victim,” the bank added.
However, trust in employees’ integrity means that colleagues may also feel let down by the employer, particularly if the offences relate to something as sensitive as sexual offences.
O’Grady was convicted of sexually abusing a family member when she was between six and nine years old and he was between 13 and 17.
“It’s clear that organizations have a duty to protect their employees from working alongside someone who has done something objectionable,” said Michael Burd, an employment lawyer at Lewis Silkin. “However, it’s very challenging to police this, particularly if something occurs during employment that isn’t widely publicized.”
For O’Grady, who was preparing to take the case to trial, things began to get complicated when he decided to plead guilty in February. At that hearing, the judge asked him if his employer was aware of the situation and he said no, according to a person present at the courtroom.
His lawyers also asked the court if he could attend his sentencing remotely, suggesting O’Grady was hoping to avoid prison.
During the sentencing hearing, O’Grady cited the fact that he had lost his job as a mitigating factor. While Judge Paul McDermott reduced the sentence to take into account his lack of prior convictions and guilty pleas, he said that if he had tried O’Grady as an adult, he would have set a maximum sentence of eight years.
“There will be a number of people across the city who have been arrested in domestic situations unrelated to their work,” Parker said. “And their employers will never know.”
Additional information from Ortenca Aliaj in London