One of the owners of a Greenwich Village deli is in a real pickle — being accused of driving out female employees with inappropriate behavior, misappropriating funds, and secretly starting a rival business, according to a new lawsuit.
Bleecker’s Finest Deli in Lower Manhattan is now at the center of a bitter legal battle following a year-long dispute that led two of the deli’s other owners, Adil Sharhan and Bashir Alkandi, to file a lawsuit in the New York Supreme Court against Fawzy Ibrahiem.
Sharhan and Alkand allege that Ibrahiem, who owns a 30% stake in the business and worked the overnight shift, breached his duties as both a worker and a shareholder.
“The company learned that Ibrahiem was absconding with company funds, not performing and abandoning his duties of employment, engaging in self-dealing detrimental to the company, and other misconduct,” the June 23 lawsuit states.
Ibrahiem’s attorney, Eric Sarver, says all the claims in the lawsuit are untrue. He also claims that his two business partners betrayed him, pushed him out of the business, withheld his rightfully earned profits, and committed numerous other wrongful acts against him.
“Fawzy Ibrahiem worked hard to co-found Bleecker’s Finest Deli,” said Sarver.
In addition to allegedly taking company funds, the lawsuit claims Ibrahiem failed to carry out his basic responsibilities in the deli, such as preparing food for the next day, cleaning his workstation, making sandwiches, and placing supply orders during his overnight shifts.
The pair also alleges that Ibrahiem sexually harassed several female employees and created such a “hostile” work environment for them that they resigned. The lawsuit included a screenshot of one text message that Ibrahiem allegedly sent to a female worker, which shows two selfies of Ibrahiem smoking a cigar, followed by an emoji of a red flower.
Ibrahiem’s lawyer said the message was taken “completely out of context.”
“My client was on vacation at the time of this text. He was asked by someone in the Deli what he was up to that day, and he wrote back with a picture of himself, on vacation, drink and cigar in hand, and jokingly wrote “my job today” (referring to his vacation). This is a sad attempt by Mr. Ibrahiem’s former business partners to malign Mr. Ibrahiem with a false accusation of sexual harassment,” Sarver said.
Secret competition?
The New Jersey resident is also alleged to have secretly opened a competing business and pressured the vendors of Bleecker’s Finest Deli to make side deals with him that were “beneficial to him, but detrimental to the company.”
According to the filing, this “self-dealing” and disloyalty breached both the company’s shareholder agreement and common-law obligations.
Sarver denied all allegations laid out in the lawsuit, telling amNewYork it is “frivolous” and “a work of pure fiction.”
“This lawsuit is frivolous — a work of pure fiction cooked up by Mr. Ibrahiem’s business partners in a calculated effort to deflect from their own wrongdoing,” Sarver said. “My client maintains that he never sexually harassed anyone at the Deli.”
The attorney claims that Sharhan and Alkand further deceived Ibrahiem into believing that they would buy out his portion of the business, “only to turn around and file this spurious lawsuit against” him.
However, the lawsuit filed by Sharhan and Alkand claims they attempted to discuss an amicable resolution of Ibrahiem’s separation from the company, including a buy-out of his shares, but that Ibrahiem “refused and threatened the company and the directors with litigation through counsel.”
Lawyers for Sharhan and Alkand did not respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, which seeks compensatory and punitive damages, a full accounting of company assets Ibrahiem may control, and repayment of all compensation earned during the period of alleged disloyalty under the faithless servant doctrine.
According to Sarver, Ibrahiem plans to countersue against these “defamatory statements.”
“The truth will come out during litigation,” Sarver added.
