Ashurst: Truth eventually came out
A member of IT staff at City giant Ashurst who stole two laptops from the firm and sold them on has been banned from working in the profession.
Under section 43 of the Solicitors Act 1974, Irfan Malik can only return to work for a law firm in the future with the approval of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
According to a notice published by the SRA yesterday, Mr Malik – who worked on the IT service desk – took the laptops from the firm’s IT storeroom in October 2023 and sold them to “a local business owner” for £500.
In March this year, Mr Malik attended an investigation meeting after the firm realised that the laptops were missing and found that one of them had been logged onto with the same wifi connection that Mr Malik used for his own Ashurst work computer.
Mr Malik denied any knowledge of the missing laptops and could not explain why the laptops had been traced to the address of a local business.
At another meeting the following week, he changed his story, saying that the laptops were now at his house after he had paid the local business owner £500 for them; he claimed that the business owner had bought them from someone on Gumtree.
The following day, he admitted what he had done.
The regulator said these actions made it “undesirable for him to be involved in a legal practice [because there] is a possibility that Mr Malik could again act dishonestly if he is involved in legal practice without the SRA’s prior consent”.
