Former Caerphilly Council head Anthony O’Sullivan has withdrawn his claim for £160,000 in holiday pay he previously calculated had been owed to him, Wales Online has reported.
O’Sullivan was finally dismissed by the council earlier this month after spending over six years on fully paid “gardening leave,” during which he continued to receive his full £137,000 pounds a year salary, collecting an impressive £822,000 pounds ($1.05 million) for doing absolutely nothing during the period.
He raised the eyebrows of Brits everywhere and made it into the pages of the national media late last week after claiming that he was still owed over £319,000 pounds in additional compensation, including £160,000 in holiday pay, as well as reimbursement for elections he couldn’t participate in, a pay hike he didn’t get and for legal fees he had incurred during a criminal case.
According to Wales Online, vacation pay aside, Mr. O’Sullivan still wants compensation for his other expenses, with the council expected to hold a special closed-door meeting on Monday to discuss his claims.
O’Sullivan was suspended in March 2013 amid allegations that he had given unlawful pay raises to himself and two of his senior colleagues. The district auditor later found him to have acted “unlawfully.” But he remained on the council’s payroll until earlier this month. His deputy Nigel Barnett and head of legal services Daniel Perkins agreed to compensation of close to £300,000 between the two of them after criminal charges related to the pay raise were dropped in 2015.
Earlier this month after finally getting sacked, Mr. O’Sullivan said he had “nothing to apologise to people in Caerphilly for,” and noted that he would appeal the decision at an employment tribunal, calling his dismissal a “travesty” and saying that he had been the target of a “vicious media campaign.”
O’Sullivan became a minor celebrity online thanks to the media’s coverage of his compensation demands, with social media users accusing him of “greed,” “corruption,” "unbelievable arrogance," and lambasting him for “stealing from people who can least afford to be stolen from” in a depressed constituency, with one user writing that the scandal was “a stain on Wales as a country and govt.”
