The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority board has scheduled a Sunday night meeting behind closed doors to “discuss strategy with respect to litigation” and possibly fire the current head of the Seaport center, the CEO’s lawyer says.

Sunday’s secret meeting comes under the weight of two Beacon Hill investigations announced in the last week.

The Senate Committee on Post Audit and Oversight launched a probe on Friday with a letter demanding information on allegations of corruption related to procuring documents, mismanagement of public funds, destruction of records, and more, by leadership of the MCCA.

Current CEO Marcel Vernon welcomed the investigation, as well as requests for information by another state committee related to efforts to curb reported racial bias and exclusion at the MCCA.

A posting on the MCCA’s website lists the meeting for 7 p.m. Sunday night with a single agenda item to go into a secret, executive session.

An attorney for Vernon, Jeffrey Robbins, said the secret meeting is, “for the purpose of terminating Mr. Vernon’s employment.” Robbins says Vernon’s anticipated termination is in retaliation for his welcoming of the investigations into the Authority.

In addition, Robbins put the MCCA on notice that the meeting is being scheduled in violation of the state’s open meeting law.

“Should the Board Meeting go forward on Sunday, we will request that the Attorney General nullify all actions taken at the meeting and impose a civil penalty on the Board,” Robbins said in his letter to the MCCA, obtained by the Herald.

Robbins says he was told by MCCA legal counsel that the meeting was intended to terminate the $300,000-plus CEO, something Robbins says is in retaliation for his public support of the two investigations into the Authority.

Robbins said the open meeting law violation comes by failing to provide notice of the meeting at least two business days in advance.

“This purported notice is an extraordinarily obvious and, indeed, transparent violation of the Open Meeting Law, and is in flagrant retaliation against Mr. Vernon for his public support for two demands for information from two separate Committees of the Massachusetts Legislature,” Robbins said in a scathing letter to the board.

“It is, moreover, an equally obvious and transparent attempt to keep Mr. Vernon — and others at the Authority or doing business with the Authority– from providing fulsome, truthful testimony and other evidence to those two Committees – testimony and evidence which, as you very well know, the Legislature and the public have the absolute right to be informed about,” he said.

Robbins says the board scheduled the emergency meeting in a “panicked desire” to “keep a ‘lid’ on unfavorable information” in order to protect certain employees at the MCCA from the investigations.

“Put another way, the planned termination of Mr. Vernon at a meeting which so clearly violates the Open Meeting Law is a reflection of a panicked desire on your part and on the part of certain other MCCA employees on whom the Legislature has focused its attention to keep a “lid” on unfavorable information, to protect the jobs of certain of those individuals and to intimidate those with information of interest to the Legislature and the public from providing it,” wrote Robbins.

“Whatever else this is, this is not the basis for an “emergency” meeting of the MCCA Board that would exempt it from following the regulations,” Robbins said.

The investigative letter from Sen. Mark Montigny directed Vernon to preserve all relevant documents at the authority, and even requested an official from the Secretary of State’s office to oversee documents “in order to ensure no Authority employees can get to them.”

Vernon placed Director of Information Security Robert Noonan on administrative leave in response. Robbins tells the Herald that the Chair of the MCCA Board of Directors reinstated Noonan on Sunday, defying Vernon, the CEO’s  action.

The letter from Montigny addresses a laundry list of concerns the committee is investigating, and seeks information about allegations of corruption among leadership at the MCCA related to contracts, employee surveillance, the hiring of outside law firms and private investigators to gather information on employees, and alleged destruction physical and electronic records.

Montigny’s letter also seeks information surrounding a series of actions by its then Chief Financial Officer, including details about multiple withdrawals from the Convention Center Fund between 2023 and 2025, and use of separate accounts “subverting” the statutory cap on taxpayer subsidies for MCCA administrative and operational spending. The committee further wants detailed explanations of the “volume and high-cost overruns”  racked up through change orders under the Capital Projects division approved by the former CFO.

When it comes to alleged attempts to destroy physical and electronic records, the committee says that in August 2023, the then-Chief Information Security Officer, Director of Technical Operations, and the Lead IT Support Services Technician swapped out MCCA employee laptops for new IT equipment in the midst of two open investigations into the Authority.

Montigny and the committee are ordering that the requested records be delivered within two weeks, setting a deadline of Dec. 19.

The new investigation comes just days after the Herald reported that Vernon and other MCCA officials have been called to testify before the Joint Committee on Racial Equity, Civil Rights and Inclusion on efforts to curb racial bias and discrimination from the Authority.

The emergency meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Sunday via Zoom.