Top City banker who cheated on his pregnant wife with junior colleague sues for sex discrimination after being sacked over affair

Daily Mail​

08-07-2025

A senior City banker who cheated on his pregnant wife with a junior colleague is suing for sex discrimination after he was sacked over the affair.
Stanislav Stepchuk, a former director at American investment bank Merrill Lynch, sent an unsolicited 'intimate photograph' of himself to the younger woman just four days after they began messaging.
He started exchanging 'sexually explicit and highly personal' WhatsApp texts with the woman, known as Colleague A, in January 2023, where she revealed to him she was a virgin who lacked sexual experience, an employment tribunal heard.
The pair pursued a relationship for several months, and were sexually intimate on two occasions, before the banker tried to break things off in the summer of 2023 after learning his wife was pregnant, the hearing was told.
Mr Stepchuk, who became a director at the financial institution in March 2018, alleges that at the beginning of August Colleague A had responded to his attempts to end the affair with 'hostility, taunts and threats'.
She suggested that if she disclosed the relationship to their employer it would have 'consequences' for his wife, her pregnancy, his child, his parents and even put his life in danger, the banker told the tribunal.
However, an internal disciplinary process found that the father of two had actually been the one to threaten her and sacked him for 'acting inappropriately' by embarking on the affair.
Now, the City banker is suing Merrill Lynch International for sex discrimination and harassment, age discrimination, and unfair dismissal.
Merrill Lynch International say their HR team had spoken to Colleague A as early as March 2023 about sexual harassment by Mr Stepchuk.
In August she raised a formal grievance alleging she had been sexually harassed and that Mr Stepchuk had threatened her when she said she was going to HR.
In January 2024 the banker was dismissed following a disciplinary procedure which found he had 'acted inappropriately' in pursuing a sexual relationship with Colleague A and had threatened her.
However, they did not uphold the complaint of sexual harassment, finding the relationship had been consensual.
At the tribunal Mr Stepchuk claims that he was discriminated against by a failure to investigate his grievance.
He claimed their approach was 'tainted' by the assumption he was the perpetrator as a more senior man, however the bank said his dismissal was 'wholly proper'.
Details of the affair emerged during a preliminary hearing to determine if Mr Stepchuk or his junior colleague were entitled to anonymity.
While he demanded that her identity be made public, he applied to have his name remain a secret to protect his family - a request that was denied by a judge.
In granting anonymity to Colleague A, Employment Judge Christabel McCooey found that her identity is 'irrelevant' to the dispute.
She reasoned that the junior colleague had not been called as a witness by the bank, and further concluded that the nature messages entitling her to privacy.
'In particular, it mentions her virginity and lack of sexual experience which is of a highly personal and intimate nature. I ask whether she had a reasonable expectation of privacy in this context,' she said.
'I consider the expectation of privacy lower in an extra-marital affair at work, where the risk of discovery is acknowledged by [Mr Stepchuk] and Colleague A in the Whatsapp messages.
'However, as a third-party to these proceedings, I do not find it foreseeable that discussion of her sexual inexperience would be before a public employment tribunal.'
However, EJ McCooey found that Mr Stepchuk could not be granted anonymity in largely because he had chosen to bring the proceedings and therefore accepted their 'public nature'.
Mr Stepchuk did not make his application until he had seen Colleague A's suggestion that the impact on his family was not as 'pressing on his mind' as he claimed and that them finding out was a consequence of him starting the affair in the first place.
'Whilst I fully accept that the sexual information contained in the Whatsapp messages is highly sensitive and intimate, I am not persuaded that[Mr Stepchuk] had a reasonable expectation of privacy in a context where he chose to begin an extra-marital affair at work and chose to send intimate photos of himself, which were unsolicited, within four days of communicating with Colleague A,' EJ McCooey said.
'He, like her, acknowledges that the affair could become known. He also knew that his work policy discouraged relationships with more junior colleagues.
'Whilst I make no substantive findings about the relationship itself, it does seem at face value that the claimant took a risk by entering the extra marital affair, knowing that the messages could become known to his wife and colleagues.
She continued: 'The impact of [his] affair on his sons' and their potential knowledge of its details is largely a consequence of the claimant's decision to engage in the affair, accepting the risks involved in that.
'I also consider again the late stage of [Mr Stepchuk's] application and find that, were the harm serious to the claimant's wife and sons, this would have been pressing on the claimant's mind and relief sought prior to seeing Colleague A's application five days ago, particularly in circumstances where [he] is assisted by very capable lawyers...
'I consider it a significant factor that, unlike Colleague A, [he] has chosen to bring these proceedings.
'It is not unreasonable to regard the person who initiates proceedings as having accepted the normal incidence of the public nature of court proceedings.'