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Sir Philip Green, the chairman of the conglomerate that owns Topshop, has been named as the man at the centre of the newest high-profile alleged #MeToo story in Britain. The Court of Appeals in the U.K. issued a gag order preventing the Telegraph from naming Green in their reporting on Tuesday, but as he was named in British parliament today, multiple media outlets have reported on the story and its subsequent developments all throughout the day. Green was confirmed to be at the centre of the allegations.
The paper said they want to reveal what it calls “alleged sexual harassment and racial abuse of staff”, who have been prevented from discussing their claims by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
Lord Peter Hain, a member of Parliament, named Green in the House of Lords today, saying he felt it was his “duty under parliamentary privilege to name Philip Green as the individual in question given that the media have been subject to an injunction preventing publication of the full details of this story which is clearly in the public interest.” He also said the allegations were of a “serious and repeated” nature and he had them heard from someone “intimately involved in the case.”
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The Telegraph reported that, similar to the case of Harvey Weinstein and other stories from the #MeToo movement, Green used non-disclosure agreements to buy the silence of his alleged victims. Similarly, he obtained a gag order from Terence Etherton, one of the most senior judges in the UK, against The Telegraph. MP Hain, in his remarks, said that Green is a “powerful businessman using non-disclosure agreements and substantial payments to conceal the truth about serious and repeated sexual harassment, racist abuse and bullying.”
In a statement this evening, after he was named in Parliament as the businessman behind the injunction, Sir Philip Green said he wholly denied the allegations: “I am not commenting on anything that has happened in court or was said in Parliament today. To the extent that it is suggested that I have been guilty of unlawful sexual or racist behaviour, I categorically and wholly deny these allegations.”