I'm sorry this will be very long but I want to get this off my chest.
I've been working as a structural engineer/manager structures in this UK based engineering firm. They do all of their engineering and architecture work offshore in Pakistan, where I live.
The UK team consists only of marketing people and on-ground surveyors. They send us leads and we work and deliver the project.
While, I absolutely loved the UK team and they loved me too- I always had friction with the CEO (who is a British-Pakistani, living in the UK) and the General Manager in Pakistan. Most of my arguments with them consisted of us being unreasonable with some clients, i.e., us not giving a refund when we should. It just was on my conscience that I'm being party to borderline legit scams. I always thought, I didn't go through engineering school to deceive people. And these people took a mortgage and used their life savings to build themselves a home and they least I could do is be honest about my work and give them my full dedication.
As part of my job, I was also tasked with dealing with engineering related issues of clients/building control/council officers and builders and taking multiple zoom meetings a day. I was strictly told to never disclose that I'm sitting in Pakistan. But, I never listened to that and always said, if asked, that I'm actually working remotely. They hated that, but they were forced to keep me in as I was like idk very good at what I did. Clients were happy, sales personnel were happy- everyone was happy except the GM & CEO.
As I was also managing a team of engineers, I always tried to fight for them to have a better work life balance. They wanted us to work 10 hours a day including Saturdays, and used to cut a day's pay for being literally a minute late. However, I fought a lot and convinced them to give people some sort of relaxation, as it will only increase their performance. We argued but they started listening once results came pouring in. This made my team love me a lot, and the CEO appreciated this too but the GM started resenting me more. As he thought, he's losing all the influence on people.
He also used to say pointless shit like how did you make a 23 year old kid a manager etc. And started making my life hell by very small nuisances i.e., not letting me have my parking space, replacing my favourite coffee, drowning office by hiring his people, cutting my break time, talking to my team against me etc.
Once he saw, nothing was affecting me, he apparently started swooping in on our computers. My coworker, left her personal WhatsApp logged in on her desktop which had a group chat I made to manage the team. In that chat we exchanged a lot of stickers, memes featuring the CEO and the GM and their crap. It was all in fun. But there was one voice note which was me talking about a job offer letter my coworker showed them to have her increase her pay. I was saying in that voice note that if they give you an extra pay but increase your hours do not stay here.
They called me in their office and told me that the job offer letter was fake and forged and I had gone against company policy to defraud the company, and presented that voice note as proof. I told them I was only looking out for my coworker and that she was an asset to the company and was being mistreated. But they weren't listening to me and kept saying they'll press legal charges against me. To which I said do whatever you want I quit. To which they said you can't quit without two weeks notice else they'll keep my month's salary (which was due that day) and press legal charges and also that they also want to go through my personal laptop and phone. To which i said fuck off and left for home.
I have not signed any sort of contract with them, whatsoever. And they're scared that I'll take their clients with me. Because I had a very good relationship with them. The CEO is very influential here and you know the law and order situation in Pakistan lol. They're threatening me with how they have the money and influence to go after me, if i dare contact the UK team or the clients.