A lawyer has won more than £30,000 after her boss didn't tell her she was being made redundant because he "didn't want to disturb her" while she was breastfeeding.
Anastasia Tuchkova worked for former mobile phone tycoon Timur Artemev as a legal project manager before she became pregnant and went off work on maternity leave.
When she returned to find she no longer had a job, she was told by her multi-millionaire boss, who is Russian, that "he hadn't wanted to spoil her mood so soon after giving birth".
Ms Tuchkova has now won £30,672 in compensation after an employment tribunal ruled she was unfairly dismissed and the victim of maternity and sex discrimination.
The hearing in London was told the Russian-qualified lawyer earned around £40,000 a year at Mr Artemev's company, Blackdown Hill Management ltd.
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The business, based in Haslemere, Surrey was in effect set up to help manage the 'work and domestic arrangements' of the 47 year old, the co-founder of Euroset, Russia's biggest mobile phone company.
He and his business partner Yevgeny Chichvarkin, an anti-Putin campaigner who is exiled in the UK, sold Euroset to the ANN investment company in 2008 for £765million.
Euroset runs more than 5,000 retail outlets in 1,464 cities in Russia and former Soviet republics.
During Ms Tuchkova's maternity leave, which began in March 2017, she emailed the company repeatedly asking them if it was OK for her to return in March 2018.
She never received a response and eventually sent an email saying she was 'looking forward to her return' and asked for an update on work done in her absence.
At this point, the tribunal heard, Mr Artemev rushed to arrange a meeting with Ms Tuchkova to tell her that he was not going to put any more money into the UK business and there would not be anything to do when she came back.
At the tribunal, Mr Artemev admitted he knew that there was unlikely to be a job for Ms Tuchkova when she got back as early as the autumn of 2017.
However, he said he had not told her as he believed 'very strongly' that breastfeeding a child was important. He said he felt he should "leave her undisturbed".
He claimed he was concerned that the shock of a prospective redundancy might affect her ability to feed her child and said "the child was more important than the mother".
When Ms Tuchkova came back into the office , Mr Artemev told her there was "no work" and advised her to look for a new job.
A "shocked" Ms Tuchkova said she wished she had known earlier and asked why she had not been given more time to find alternative employment.
Mr Artemev told her "I really didn't want to spoil your mood when you've just given birth".
Ms Tuchkova was finally made redundant in July 2018.
At the latest compensation hearing, it was heard she suffered anxiety and had to visit her GP.
The new mother struggled to find work, despite being educated, as her law qualifications were from Russia.
She applied unsuccessfully for jobs and eventually applied for job seeker's allowance.
Ms Tuchkova won claims of unfair dismissal succeeded, unfavourable treatment because of pregnancy, and maternity and sex discrimination.
She lost other claims of sexual discrimination, harassment and unfair dismissal.
Previously, Employment Judge Mary Siddall said: "We do not accept the [Mr Artemev's] evidence that he did not wish to disturb or upset [Ms Tuchkova] whilst she was on maternity leave and possibly breastfeeding.
"[Ms Tuchkova] had specifically stated that she wanted to be informed during her leave about other opportunities and company information.
"There was nothing to stop the anyone from [Blackdown Hill Management ltd] contacting her during her absence.
"We conclude that although we accept that at the point the employment was terminated a genuine redundancy situation existed, the process adopted leading up to that point had not been fair."
