Signature: Solicitor can now approve client account transfers
A solicitor who returned to the profession after being jailed for four years for money laundering offences can now hold client money and act as a signatory on client account, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has decided.
However, restrictions preventing Shadab Ahmed Khan from being a sole practitioner or compliance officer will continue, along with the requirement that his employment as a solicitor must be approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).
Mr Khan, 55 this year, was jailed for four years in 2009 after he was found guilty at Leeds Crown Court of one count of money laundering and two counts of failing to disclose knowledge or suspicion of money laundering.
He was struck off in 2011 but in late 2020 the SDT approved his return to the roll, with conditions, after finding he had been “totally rehabilitated”.
The tribunal imposed conditions preventing him from holding client money or acting as a signatory on client account, being a partner in a firm for three years from the ruling, being a sole practitioner, being a compliance officer, and requiring him to obtain the approval of the SRA for employment as a solicitor.
He has been working as a solicitor since at Bradford firm Hallmark Legal and applied for removal of the remaining conditions – the partnership condition having expired in 2023 – this year.
Counsel for Mr Khan said the solicitor “did not seek to minimise the seriousness” of what had happened.
The application was “based upon a substantial body of evidence demonstrating insight, rehabilitation, safe practice, regulatory compliance, employer support, the absence of any further misconduct and the absence of any evidence-based risk capable of justifying the continuation of the restrictions”.
The SRA argued that the restrictions remained “necessary and proportionate” despite the solicitor’s compliance with them since 2020, and “compliance alone did not establish that the restrictions were no longer needed”.
The SDT decided that, although Mr Khan had “demonstrated progress in his professional rehabilitation”, it was not satisfied that the evidence “established that all of the remaining conditions had ceased to be necessary”.
Public confidence in the profession would be undermined if Mr Khan was permitted to practise “entirely free from restrictions”.
The tribunal was “not persuaded that the concerns arising from the original misconduct had diminished to such an extent as to justify the complete removal of all safeguards”.
The conditions should instead be reviewed “in light of the evidence of the applicant’s rehabilitation and the period during which he had practised compliantly under supervision”.
The SDT concluded that the restrictions preventing Mr Khan from holding client money and acting as a signatory on a client account “no longer remained necessary or proportionate”.
But the remaining conditions “continued to represent appropriate and proportionate safeguards. Those conditions remained properly calibrated to the specific risks they were intended to address and continued to serve the public interest in maintaining confidence in the profession”.
Mr Kahn was also ordered to pay £7,500 in costs.
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