A mutual fund company is appealing a wrongful dismissal case won by its former president, who claimed millions of dollars in damages.

The Leeds Company, which was acquired by the Dundee Bank in 1998, was started by Nitin Aggarwal in 1993. After the Dundee group bought the company Aggarwal was made its president.

Under a company purchase agreement, Aggarwal remained on as president receiving $200,000 over a four-year period as well as sharing in the profit of the company.

However, in 2002 Aggarwal was fired from his position and later sued the Leeds Company claiming he was wrongfully dismissed. In 2006, Puisne Judge Geoffrey Bell ruled in favour of Aggarwal who was later awarded compensation for almost $800,000. However, yesterday Jai Pachai of Wakefield Quinn attorneys argued the company dismissed Aggarwal rightfully because he had not filed pay roll tax returns for his employees for three years.

Mr. Pachai said there were also questions raised about the payment of credit cards and receivables to the company while Aggarwal was president.

While Aggarwal did not directly benefit from the failure to submit the tax statements or failure to pay the credit cards, Mr. Pachai agreed, it helped boost the income of the company.

A boost in the company's income would indirectly help Aggarwal who would be ending his four-year contract as president in 2002 and would be able to benefit from the added income in his profit-sharing scheme, according to Mr. Pachai.

However, Appeals Court President Edward Zacca questioned how boosting the income of the company in 2000 and 2001 would help Aggarwal whose compensation would have been decided by auditors catching any wrong-doings.

He said: "How could Mr. Aggarwal have influenced what he got? If he was trying to end the profit-sharing scheme it would have been for the previous two years not the current year.

"In 2002 he would not have been in charge of the figures because he would have already left the company and the relevant figures would have been decided by auditors."

Mr. Pachai said that further evidence would be produced tomorrow, that would indicate regardless of the benefit to himself, Aggarwal failed to account for credit card payments, receivables and pay roll tax while he was president. The two and half-day hearing is expected to continue this morning.