San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 4, 2009 -- Greg Shenkman, CEO and co-founder of Exigen Group, a San Francisco-based company and its affiliate companies that employ over 2,000 people in 15 countries, is being sued in San Francisco Superior Court (Case number CGC-09-485624) by his former Executive Assistant, Iryna Kharchenko, for physical and verbal sexual harassment and sexual battery. The lawsuit also states that company officials refused to act on Kharchenko's prior complaints to stop the abuse, and that Exigen ultimately fired her for complaining about Shenkman's treatment.
Kharchenko, a native of Ukraine, alleges that Shenkman lured her and other young Eastern European women to the United States with promises of a visa and a job at Exigen's San Francisco headquarters. Soon after arriving in the United States in March 2004 to work for Exigen, Kharchenko alleges that Shenkman subjected her to constant, inappropriate sexual harassment, including physical touching and sexual advances.
Kharchenko and the other Eastern European women worked for Exigen under H-1B visas. The law states that an H-1B employee must work for the host company that sponsored the employee, and severely limits the sponsored employee from changing jobs. The lawsuit claims that Shenkman used the H-1B visa laws to take advantage of Kharchenko and the other Eastern European women. "An executive should be not able to abuse his position of power and use the promise of a better life in America to lure young, Eastern European women to work for an American company, and then threaten to fire them and have them deported if they do not comply with his sexual demands," said Kharchenko's attorney, Scott Bonagofsky.
Kharchenko's complaint states, for example, that Shenkman summoned her from San Francisco to his hotel room in New York City while he was on a business trip to meet with record executives from Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, then threatened to fire her and send her back to Ukraine when she resisted his inappropriate sexual advances.
Kharchenko claims that when she complained of Shenkman's conduct to Tanya Veshvyakova, Director of Human Resources for Exigen, her grievances were not investigated and she was told that she had to put up with Shenkman's conduct until she could get a green card allowing her to leave Exigen and get a job a different company. Shenkman banished Kharchenko from the 23rd floor of Exigen's offices to the 4th floor, demanded that she move out of the apartment that Exigen provided for her, and then terminated her employment just prior to Christmas in 2008.
Kharchenko came to America from humble beginnings in Ukraine, a former Soviet Bloc country that was hard hit economically by the fall of the Soviet Union. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Ukraine fell more than 60% during the 1990s, a drop in GDP that was approximately twice that experienced by the United States during the Great Depression. "We believe that the evidence will show that Shenkman went to troubled former Soviet Bloc countries such as Ukraine to recruit his young, female assistants because he thought that he would be able to find women who were more willing to go along with his inappropriate conduct than an American woman would be," said Bonagofsky.
Despite an incredibly difficult economic climate in her home country, Kharchenko excelled in academics during her youth and was actively involved in local community service. Kharchenko was a charter member and the first president of the Sumy Rotaract Club (a Rotary-sponsored service club for men and women ages 18-30), and provided services and aid to disabled youth and war veterans. Kharchenko obtained a degree in business administration from Sumy State University in Ukraine, and then was awarded a Rotary Club Ambassadorial Scholarship to attend college at Lander University in South Carolina. She obtained another bachelor's degree in business administration from Lander University in 2002, and returned to Ukraine when her student visa expired, hoping to return to America to live and work.
Prior to co-founding Exigen in 1999, Shenkman was the Chief Executive Officer of Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories Inc., a company that he founded in 1990, took public in 1998 during the dot com boom, and then sold to Alcatel for $1.6 billion in 1999.
Potential witnesses are encouraged to contact Kharchenko's attorney, Scott Bonagofsky, by telephone at (415) 882-1555
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