A WOULD-BE Labour candidate was described as “untruthful” and “evasive” by a judge in a tribunal case involving a charity for survivors of abuse he helped run.

Asim Khan, who wants to be the next MP for Glasgow South West, was accused of a “complete failure” to protect a woman at the Roshni organisation who had been harassed and victimised.

The judge also recommended that Khan, as chair of the now-defunct charity, issue an apology to the victim, who was awarded over £70,000.

In a statement to this newspaper, Khan said he had made a “full apology” to the woman on behalf of the charity and said he had given the tribunal an “accurate account of my knowledge of the claims”.

Khan, a solicitor, is one of four hopefuls trying to become Labour’s Westminster candidate in the Glasgow seat.

The winner stands a good chance of becoming an MP as the sitting member, Chris Stephens of the SNP, has a majority of less than 70 votes.

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However, Khan is under the spotlight over a Sunday Herald investigation into his involvement with Roshni, which was a publicly-funded charity set up to provide services to abuse survivors from ethnic minority communities. He was a trustee and served as chair.

Roshni was wound up last year after a scandal involving its founder, Ali Khan, who was judged to have harassed a female colleague.

At a remedy hearing in August 2016, an employment tribunal ordered Roshni and Ali Khan to pay the anonymous staffer - Miss C - £74,647, which included £35,000 for injury to feelings and £20,000 for personal injury.

The judgement stated that Miss C had been subject to “harassment, victimisation and discrimination” by Ali Khan and another man, Shaukat Sultan.

Ali Khan’s actions included reducing the victim’s working days after she rejected his advances, threatening her with dismissal, verbal and physical abuse, making “sexually explicit remarks to her” and encouraging her to flirt with potential advertisers.

The tribunal also found Ali Khan made threats to disclose intimate details of her personal life to third parties and threats of violence towards her family.

According to the judgement, the abuse had a “considerable” toll on the victim, including loss of confidence, feelings of hopelessness, inability to sleep and alopecia.

However, Asim Khan was also mentioned in the remedy judgement: “We have noted that there was a complete failure on behalf of the Chairman of the First Respondent, Mr Asim Khan to take any steps to protect the claimant…”

The judgement made three recommendations, one of which related to Asim Khan taking “no action” when Miss C approached him.

It stated: “For all of these reasons we find it appropriate to require the Chairperson of the First Respondent to issue a letter of apology to the claimant in respect of the treatment that she has received from the Second Respondent [Ali Khan] and Shaukat Sultan.”

In December 2016, another unanimous judgement was issued, this time awarding Miss C £20,000 each from Roshni and Ali Khan in expenses.

The judgement included a summary of the oral findings from May: “In relation to Asim Khan, we found that Mr Khan was evasive at the outset of cross-examination.”

It added: “We found that Mr Asim Khan was untruthful, and that he did know what was going on between Mr Ali Khan and the claimant because he had received the voicemail left by Ali Khan, that they had a supplementary conversation and that he would have received a copy of the email of 18 May 2015.”

In the “decision and reasons” section relating to the Roshni expenses, the judge dealt with allegations that Asim Khan had contacted a named individual to pressurise Miss C not to pursue the claims.

“We accept that Asim Khan contacted [the individual] in circumstances where he understood the claimant to be represented by a solicitor. He himself is a solicitor who appears regularly before the Employment Tribunal and he knew or ought to have known that the claimant had begun early conciliation. He would understand therefore that it was entirely inappropriate for him to act in this way.”

The judgement continued: “These actions were taken, we have found, as part of the efforts instigated by Mr Ali Khan to place pressure upon the claimant to withdraw her claim. Mr Asim Khan took those steps on behalf of the first respondent [Roshni] and so the first respondent was party to those efforts.”

It added: “We found that Mr Asim Khan had effectively not been truthful in giving his account of whether he knew of the grievance of 18 May or whether the claimant had had the conversation referred to on 21 May.”

According to Companies House, Asim Khan quit as a director on July 29 2016, days before the remedy hearings started. In December of that year, a newspaper reported that the victim had not received a penny of the money.

Asim Khan confirmed he is standing to be a Labour candidate and said: “I am proud of my role with Roshni and the charitable work we did for vulnerable ethnic minority communities in Glasgow. The claims which came to light were deeply distressing and following the tribunal I made a full apology to Ms C on behalf of the charity. As chair, I acted appropriately at all times and provided the tribunal with an accurate account of my knowledge of the claims. I strongly reject any opinion to the contrary.”