Boohoo boss faces £118m legal battle with tech expert who claims to be the firm’s third founder
Boohoo was founded by Mahmud Kamani and executive director Carol Kane in 2006
Boohoo co-founder and chairman Mahmud Kamani is facing a £118.5million legal claim from an IT contractor purporting to be the firm’s third founder.
Richard Womack, who provided IT services to the fashion group in 2006, is demanding the multi-million pound sum and a 10 per cent stake in the retailer as part of claims that Kamani breached an agreement. Boohoo was founded by Kamani, 54, and executive director Carol Kane, 52, in 2006.
The retailer, which also owns Pretty Little Thing, is known for its cheap and cheerful clothes which are popular with customers in their late teens and early 20s.
Soaring sales have bolstered Boohoo’s share price, with the company now worth £2.7billion compared with £560million when it listed in 2014.
But Kamani, whose family is worth £1.2billion according to the Sunday Times Rich List, is being pursued for a slice of his fortune, according to a High Court document.
Womack claims he was instrumental in Boohoo’s early success and its subsequent growth, having helped Kamani build Boohoo’s website and selected the logo for the brand.
Womack claims it took two years to build the website, some of which he says he paid for using his own money.
He says he also bought equipment for photoshoots and was responsible for collecting contact details of interested customers when the website launched at the Clothes Show Live in December 2006.
After the work was complete, Womack claims he was offered a 10 per cent stake in Boohoo by management in return for sharing vital computer programming elements associated with the website.
Womack says he was also heavily involved in the management and control of Boohoo after the website’s launch.
He said: ‘I’ve never received a single penny for my work on the website and it’s just not right, particularly when, the reality is, Boohoo has three founders, not two.
‘We agreed that I would receive 10 per cent in the company by way of remuneration for the work I did and that’s all I ask for – what was agreed.’
But a spokesman for Kamani called Womack’s demands ‘opportunistic’ and said he has previously attempted to extract money from the billionaire Boohoo co-founder.
Kamani lashed out at Womack in a string of voicemails published in 2015 after he grew frustrated with the contractor’s refusal to hand over codes, domain names and other IT details which belonged to Boohoo.
In one, Kamani said: ‘I’ll take your ****ing house and ****ing car and ****ing missus.’
A spokesman for Kamani’s law firm, Pannone Corporate, said: ‘Womack’s allegations are entirely without merit.’