Almost two months after Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in a New York State prison, the disgraced movie mogul is still facing a host of legal problems both at home and abroad.
In the U.K., a previously unknown sexual assault complaint was revealed on Wednesday, when an appeals judge issued a public ruling in an employment tribunal.
The ruling did not offer much detail — only that an unidentified female claimant had accused Weinstein of harassment and assault in December 2017. The claimant also accused former Weinstein Co. president David Glasser and several Weinstein Co. board members — Bob Weinstein, Tim Sarnoff, Tarak Ben Ammar, Lance Maerov, and Richard Koenigsberg — of knowingly helping Weinstein to commit the offenses.
Employment tribunals in the U.K. are typically kept confidential in the preliminary stages. In this case, the respondents were ordered in July 2019 to turn over documents to the claimant.
Sarnoff, a senior executive at Technicolor, has denied the allegations against him. He also refused to turn over the documents on the grounds that he is an American, and British employment tribunals can only compel production of documents within Great Britain. He filed an appeal of the judge’s ruling.
On Wednesday, the appeals judge upheld the ruling, and ordered Sarnoff to provide evidence.
Negar Yazdani, managing partner at Black Lion Law, who is representing the claimant, tells Variety that this week’s ruling “is a good step forward in ensuring that those in senior positions who work with alleged abusers in corporate environments and knew, or ought to have known, about sexual misconduct of employees are held to account in English courts regardless of the jurisdiction in which they are based.”
Yazdani says the case will now continue to trial as normal, unless Sarnoff applies for leave to appeal the decision in the Court of Appeal.
Yazdani says such an appeal would be “a waste of time as this decision concerned a preliminary technical issue, and would only have the effect of further delaying trial and consequently delivering justice to the victim.”
Elsewhere in the U.K., 11 allegations of sexual assault have been made against Weinstein. The Met Police has confirmed to Variety that the investigation, known as ‘Operation Kaguyak,’ is still ongoing. A separate civil suit, representing six women, is also still live.
In addition, Weinstein is facing five criminal charges in Los Angeles, including rape and sexual assault. He is currently serving his sentence at the Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison near Buffalo.