Dov Charney, American Apparel’s founder and CEO, was said to be fired last week due to claims of sexual harassment. After Buzzfeed received AA’s termination letter to Charney, however, it seems his accused misdemeanors appear to come in bulk and stretch even further than the realm of sexual abuse. Although Charney plans on suing American Apparel for wrongful termination, it looks like he’ll have to wash out massive loads of this dirty laundry first:

  • Using company funds to pay off former female employees, or distributing “significant severance packages to numerous former employees to ensure that [his] misconduct vis-a-vis these employees would not subject [him] to personal liability”. These packages were equipped with legally binding signed release agreements that included the “potential subordination of perjury,” indicating that if called to court, these paid-off employees would be required to lie under oath.
  • Engaging in sexual harassment and verbal abuse, or: “[engaging] in conduct that repeatedly put [him] in a position to be sued by numerous former employees for claims that include harassment, discrimination and assault.” Charney was also not an enthusiast of sexual harassment training that serves to help eliminate harassment in the workplace. The termination letter states that “in the recent past, [he] refused to participate in mandatory sexual harassment training and undermined the Company’s policies by interrupting employee sexual harassment training mandated under California law”. He also made “derogatory and disparaging remarks directed at persons of certain ethnicities or related to their gender, sexual orientation or religious persuasion”.
  • Permitting an employee to organize a “Revenge Porn” blog. Former saleswoman Irene Morales, who accused Charney of making her his “sex slave” back in 2011, sued American Apparel for $260 million. The case was sent into arbitration by a judge in 2012, but while the case was under way, an AA employee had created a fake blog, posing as Morales and publishing multiple nude photographs of her in order to try and discredit her case. Although Charney knew this was going on, he didn’t go out of his way to try and take the blog down. He was “in a position to prevent this conduct from occurring but, since it benefited [him] personally, [he] allowed it to continue”.
  • Putting his mother and father on the company payroll, while his mother is flat out not an employee, and giving his father $238,000 in AA funds, or “architectural consulting and director fees”.
  • Indulging his family and friends through the misuse of company funds, by not only paying his parents with AA money but using the company credit to book them flights, allowing his friends to use corporate apartments and using them himself even while away on non-company related trips.

Check out the gallery of American Apparel ads below that expose Charney’s perviness to the public eye.

[via Buzzfeed]