SDT: Similar allegations against all three solicitors
The three solicitors whose firms were shut down last year after being named in a Daily Mail undercover investigation are to face the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT), it was confirmed yesterday.
After a notice of Muhammad Nazar Hayat’s referral to the SDT was published last month, notices for the other two, Muhammad Azfar Ahmad and Rashid Ahmad Khan, were published yesterday – even though the decisions to prosecute were taken in January and February respectively.
The newspaper claimed in July 2023 that various lawyers had offered to help an undercover reporter concoct a story to support an asylum claim.
Amid huge political and media pressure, the SRA then closed the firms after receiving the recordings and transcripts from the newspaper.
The firms were Rashid & Rashid in south-west London, Kingswright Solicitors in Birmingham and Lincoln Lawrence in west London, Mr Hayat’s firm.
Mr Ahmad, the principal at Kingswright, is accused of advising a person he believed to be a prospective client to provide “a false narrative in support of an asylum claim” and/or “to enter into a marriage, in the absence of a genuine relationship, for the purpose of regulating his immigration status”.
Mr Rashid, principal of Rashid & Rashid, is accused of giving advice on two separate occasions which “encouraged a false narrative to be put forward in support of an asylum claim”.
The interventions automatically suspended the three men’s practising certificates and the SRA has refused each of their subsequent applications to return to practise.
The most recent was Mr Ahmad’s, with the SRA saying it was “not in the public interest” to grant him a practising certificate. The decision was made in March but only published last month.
“Mr Ahmad’s alleged conduct poses a risk to the reputation of the profession and the trust and confidence the public places in the profession and the provision of legal services.”
The allegations are as yet unproven.
