The hapless Australian banker who was caught looking at racy photos on national television earlier this week is going to keep his job, thanks in part to an internet campaign and the support of the model herself.
Remember that guy? A few days ago, an employee at Macquarie Bank in Australia with some spectacularly bad timing was nailed while looking at a naked photo of model Miranda Kerr on live, national television. Any chance of blaming it on someone else went sailing out the window when, at the last second, he turned around to face the camera, presumably to confirm the source of the creeping horror that was slowly dawning on him.
Turns out that his name is David Kiely, he’s a private wealth adviser at Macquarie and he was very quickly suspended after the story hit the headlines, which as you might expect didn’t take long at all. He’s been sitting at home ever since, stewing over his future and, one would imagine, avoiding phone calls from his mom, but following an influx of support from the public and Kerr herself, the bank has announced that he won’t be fired.
Macquarie said it had completed an internal review of the situation and that poor Dave was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. “He will remain an employee of Macquarie,” the bank said in a statement. “Macquarie and the employee apologize for any offense that may have been caused.”
The decision was no doubt helped along by the “Save Dave” campaign launched by the website Here is the City, which encouraged people to write to Macquarie to ask that Kiely be allowed to keep his job. The effort received a big push when Kerr, the model Kiely was eyeballing, offered her support. “I am told there is a petition to save his job and of course I would sign it,” she said.
Allegations also surfaced that the whole thing was a set-up. Channel 10 News (via Adelaide Now) reported that the emails containing the photos, taken from a recent GQ photo shoot, finished with the line “Turn around now,” which is what actually led him to turn and look at the camera. Whatever the case, the YouTube video of Kiely’s heroics has thus far pulled in 225,000 hits, quickly turning him from an anonymous bank drone to an internet sensation, without, fortunately for him, turning him unemployed in the process.
Source: Adelaide Now
