Global Mobile Vision: sued by recruitment company, investigated by Department

Global Mobile Vision, the company accused by former employees of withholding wages and bizarre work practices, is being sued by its recruitment company and being investigated by the Department. By Ruairi McCann, Colin Murphy and Hilary Curley

The government is investigating the software company Global Mobile Vision, after Village reported allegations by an employee that he had been detained at the company's offices, and allegations by staff that the company had withheld payment. The company has denied the allegations.

Tánaiste Mary Harney told the Dáil on Wednesday 15 June, in response to a question from Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins about GMV, "that matter are being investigated". Any deficiencies in legislation concerning workers' rights would be addressed, she said.

And a recruitment company, IT Talent, which sourced workers for GMV between September and December 2004, has begun a High Court action against GMV for unpaid debt. IT Talent stopped providing recrutment services to GMV in December, "due to concerns voiced by candidates already working for GMV regarding payment of their salaries," said a company spokesman. "This was compounded by the fact we ourselves found it difficult to obtain company information to facilitate invoicing."

Following the publication of last week's article on Global Mobile Vision (Village, 10-16 June), a number of former employees of GMV have received payments owed to them, and have received P45s. A number of contractors who were owed monies were also paid, including one who had been owed more than €7,000 for a number of months, despite invoicing the company on repeated occasions.

Global Mobile Vision was incorporated in the UK in August 2004 and has had offices in Nangor Road Business Park in Clondalkin since November 2004. The company is run by David Crownborn, his wife, Esther Crownborn, his brother, Matthew Crownborn, and the latter's wife, Deborah King.

The Crownborns were the subject of an investigation by the Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation last year, according to a Garda source. The investigation was suspended because it "ran out of steam" and the detectives "didn't find anything criminal", the source said.

Global Mobile Vision is registered in the UK. The company's notepaper carries its UK registration number and an address at 41 Baggot St, Dublin. There is no GMV office at this address, although a business at that address keeps mail for the company.

GMV appears also to operate under the name of Paracletes Technologies Ltd. Employees have been given payslips in the name of Paracletes Technologies but received letters of termination of employment on headed paper bearing the name of GMV.

GMV is also linked to an Irish-registered company currently in liquidation, Yard Broadcast Network (YBN), which was acquired by the Crownborns in March 2004.

Staff who spoke to Village described a working environment at GMV in which there was a rule of absolute silence, where management had "sleepers" amongst staff to report back on the activites of other staff, and where one member of management regularly requested "hugs" from female workers.

They also said that little or no work was done by staff in the company, and that they were not aware of any income-generating business conducted by the company. These allegations have also been refuted by the company. The company describes its business as content streaming for mobile phones.

Since the publication of the initial article, GMV have removed address and telephone details on their website (which did not work) for offices in the US and UK, and have replaced them with contact details for a spokesperon, Alex Fitzgerald.