Home Office: Trainee failed to declare second job
A solicitor who had a second job at the Home Office while a trainee and used it to access the visa application files of clients and family members has been suspended for a year.
Md Towhidul Islam admitted looking up seven visa applicants he knew personally while working for the Home Office as an executive officer between August and November 2019.
He also admitted failing to declare to the Home Office that he was also working as a trainee solicitor at Waterstone Legal at the same time.
In a statement of agreed facts and outcome with the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), Mr Islam admitted recklessness, lack of integrity and failing to behave in a way which maintained trust in the profession. The SRA withdrew allegations of dishonesty.
Mr Islam was born in 1987, qualified in 2020 and had a current practising certificate.
At the time of his misconduct, he was doing immigration law work as a trainee for Waterstone Legal, a firm based in London and Leicester.
In August 2019, Mr Islam was also employed by the Home Office as an executive officer litigation caseworker, dealing with pre-action protocol letters and judicial review claims. He resigned three and a half months later.
This gave him access to Home Office databases, including the Central Referencing System (CRS), which holds “highly confidential information regarding all UK visa applications”.
On multiple occasions, Mr Islam accessed eight visa application files on the CRS in respect of cases that had not been allocated to him, in breach of Home Office policy. Five concerned family members, two related to clients of his at the law firm and the other was someone he knew.
All but one of them had concluded before he started working at the Home Office, and the other while he was there. His actions “had no direct impact on any live appeals”, the SRA acknowledged.
The SDT said there was also no evidence he disclosed the information to any third party or that he intended to cause harm.
“In assessing culpability, the tribunal had regard to the respondent’s misplaced and inappropriate curiosity concerning the progress of immigration matters with which he was personally connected,” it said.
The Home Office did not start investigating what he had done for more than two years after he left.
Mr Islam admitted that he should not have accessed the data and should have told the Home Office that he was a trainee solicitor.
Mr Islam said the conduct “took place at a time of significant personal difficulty”, where he “struggled with the burden of studies, two jobs and a wife who had a number of complications with her pregnancy”.
He told the SDT that the experience “has led to a significant period of reflection and he is determined that such conduct is never repeated. Accordingly, since these events, he has developed his practice and skills to become a better solicitor”.
The tribunal said the solicitor should have appreciated the potential conflict of interest in his two roles.
Mr Islam was suspended for 12 months, and conditions were imposed on his practising certificate for a further period of 12 months, preventing him from being a law firm owner or manager, compliance officer, or working in employment without SRA approval.
He was ordered to pay costs of £41,350.