You know that old saying relating to buses; you wait ages for one, then two come at once? Well, for those who believe that solicitors who abuse their power should face tough charges, this phrase could not be more true!
Two solicitors have recently been jailed for illegal behaviour, in totally unrelated events, which has caused a wave of appreciation among the general public that believe that lawyers can get away with anything. A Liverpool conveyancing solicitor was charged with allowing criminal criminal property to pass through his client’s account, while the other solicitor who is from Northern Ireland was charged with failing to report suspicions of money laundering.
The fact that they were both caught and jailed at similar times was a total coincidence, yet picked up by the press and their cases splashed across the pages of the tabloid’s. The Liverpool conveyancing solicitor’s case was an unfortunate one, with the real criminal being his client who was laundering money through his account.
The solicitor has now been struck off the legal register and is facing a jail term had been aware of large sums of money that had been passing through his client’s bank account and on one occasion had even allowed 66,500 to go through the books one week without reporting it to the authorities.
Now, client confidentiality can be a tricky subject, as no solicitor wants a reputation for telling the authorities about even the slightest suspicious behaviour; however, there is a limit to how far this confidentiality can and should go, and in this case, the solicitor must have been aware that something illegal was taking place.
Also involved in conveyancing work, the other solicitor was operating out of Shrewsbury and had not alerted the authorities when a house sale that he was involved with went for a mere third of the asking price; as it happens, the property was owned by drug traffickers who were making a quick sale in order not to surrender it as an asset, pending an upcoming trial.
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Both solicitors showed either professional negligence or great naivety, neither of which can be tolerated by the law in such cases and they have both paid a heavy price for their errors.
If you have a query concerning the conveyancing process and would like some legal advice from a professional lawyer, then contact a Liverpool conveyancing solicitor today.