SRA: Tribunal referral revoked
A solicitor who dishonestly amended a report on title to correct an error she had made more than two years earlier has agreed to remove herself from the roll until 2030 at the earliest.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has revoked its referral of Kiran Yadav to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, made in August 2020, as a result of the regulatory settlement agreement it has now struck with her.
Ms Yadav was an assistant solicitor with London firm Jeffrey Green Russell before it was acquired in October 2015 by what is now Ince Gordon Dadds, where she was an associate.
She was acting on a proposed 999-year lease of a property, the instructions having moved to Ince with her.
In November 2015, Ms Yadav provided the client with a report on title that incorrectly said there was no prohibition on underletting and charging.
In May 2018, the client requested a copy of, amongst other things, any lease summary prepared by the firm on whether there was a restriction on underletting.
According to the agreement, Ms Yadav emailed a report she had amended to remove the previous confirmation that there was none. It now said there was an absolute prohibition on underletting all or any part of the property.
Later that month, she told the firm’s internal risk team that she had found two different copies of the reports on file, which she attributed to the merger of her old and new firm’s systems, one of which said that underletting was prohibited and the other that it was not. She claimed to have sent the client the wrong one.
However, an internal investigation confirmed that Ms Yadav had in fact altered the initial report before sending it to the client.
Ms Yadav admitted to the SRA that she knew the client had requested the original report to establish the advice given, and that she had knowingly misled her firm as well.
In doing so, she was dishonest, lacked integrity and had damaged trust in the profession.
The SRA said that, in deciding that an undertaking to remove herself from the roll was appropriate, it had taken into account “confidential information regarding Ms Yadav’s medical and personal circumstances”.
As well as undertaking to voluntarily remover her name from the roll of solicitors within seven days, Ms Yadav undertook not to apply for re-admission for at least 10 years, commencing on 1 August 2020.
She will also pay the SRA costs of £1,400.
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