Immigration: Solicitor used pretence of working through law firm
A solicitor who admitted paying almost £77,000 in fees into his personal bank account from over 100 clients has been struck off.
Tapfumanei Nyawanza also handled matters and received client money without opening files on his firm’s system.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) described his dishonesty as “deliberate, calculated and repeated”.
In a statement of agreed facts and outcome, approved by the SDT, the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) said Mr Nyawanza, who qualified in 2009, was a director of Genesis Law Associates Solicitors between 2013 and 2019, when Axiom DWFM became its successor practice – this later became Axiom Ince and collapsed in October 2023.
Mr Nyawanza began working for Axiom DWFM in January 2020 and the law firm agreed to pay Genesis’s run-off cover. The solicitor moved to a consultancy role in August 2021 before leaving in June 2022.
Axiom DWFM made three separate reports about Mr Nyawanza to the SRA in 2022 over concerns of receiving fees in his personal bank account, using DWFM’s name to conduct outside business dealings, and undertaking work for clients without opening matters on DWFM’s case management system.
The SRA said that, between May 2020 and June 2022, Mr Nyawanza received £60,600 in fees into his personal bank account relating to immigration work undertaken “under the pretence” that the work was being undertaken by the law firm. This was made up of 141 separate payments from 102 different payors.
Between February and June 2022, he received a further £16,350 from another client in respect of visa applications for skilled workers.
Mr Nyawanza used the name of the law firm on 37 applications and the results were sent to his email account at Axiom DWFM.
The solicitor then worked as a consultant for fee-share firm Mezzle from May 2022 to March 2023, when his consultancy agreement was terminated because he had been working on matters without opening client files.
The firm had received correspondence and in 10 matters funds which could not be allocated to an open file.
Mr Nyawanza admitted failing to open client files and, when he did, failing to keep “adequate documentation”, such as not issuing client-care letters.
In non-agreed mitigation, he said Axiom DWFM was not paying his commissions “on time as per agreement”, which created financial pressure on him “as the main breadwinner”.
Mr Nyawanza also said he “mostly completed the work clients instructed him to do”.
This was not his first appearance before the SDT. In 2022, he was fined £12,500 [1] after admitting “not having noticed” that his client’s judicial review had been struck out and not working on the case for almost two years.
The SRA said a strike-off was appropriate now given the “deliberate and prolonged” dishonesty while at AxiomDWFM, the aim of which was “to gain a personal financial advantage”. Furthermore, he was “a moderately senior practitioner” at the time.
Mr Nyawanza agreed to be struck off and pay £25,000 in costs.