Sacked long-time Frontline Management bookkeeper Sophia Ronaas has filed a complaint with Norwegian data privacy authorities against her former employer for accessing a decade of her emails, illegally, according to her lawyers.
The alleged privacy violations emerged in an Oslo District Court proceeding in which Ronaas is claiming wrongful dismissal, seeking reinstatement and damages. Norwegian business daily Dagens Naeringsliv reported the lawsuit on 25 June.
Ronaas' employer, then led by Robert Hvide Macleod, had opened the emails in pursuit of evidence that she had leaked insider information about publicly listed companies in the John Fredriksen sphere.
In her employee electronic mailbox, Frontline Management found a decade-long correspondence between Ronaas and Shanghai-based senior colleague Bjorn Westerberg, formerly based in Oslo, in which the two are freely discussing office politics and rising levels of spending that both found alarming.
But some matters discussed were later the subject matter of stock-exchange disclosure.
Frontline Management is a subsidiary of tanker owner Frontline that also provides services to other publicly listed companies in the Fredriksen group, including bulker owner Golden Ocean Group, LNG carrier owner Flex LNG, financial owner SFL Corp and previously rig owner Seadrill.
Frontline Management represented Ronaas' communications as breaches of "insider" rules because Westerberg is employed by a different branch of the organisation than Ronaas.
Newbuilding programme
As Frontline Ltd's technical director, Westerberg oversees the company's extensive newbuilding programme in China.
But Ronaas maintained that there was nothing to leak to Westerberg, who was senior to her and more fully informed, and Westerberg confirmed this view in his own testimony.
Ronaas also said there was little secrecy within the Frontline Management open-plan office at Oslo's Aker Brygge.
"This was common knowledge internally; everybody knew about these things and talked about them. We gossiped. But nobody talked about it externally," Dagens Naeringsliv cited her as telling the Oslo District Court.
Ronaas and Westerberg's worries about cost control were also shared by long-term tanker chartering executive Hans-Petter Loken, who retired last year with a parting memo to Fredriksen about costs that were going out of control and a difficult working culture that had talent walking out the door.
Ronaas' lawyer and Loken did not respond to email requests for comment and Westerberg has been unavailable by telephone.
This story has been amended since publication to clarify that Frontline Management is a subsidiary of tanker owner Frontline and to clarify information about electronic communications involving Ronaas.
