Ban for ex-Axiom Ince employee who transferred £54.5m from bank account

A non-solicitor involved in the improper transfer of tens of millions of pounds from the bank account of Axiom Ince has been barred from working in the profession. Another former staffer has been banned for doctoring bank statements and misleading the Solicitors Regulation Authority when the regulator was investigating the doomed accumulator firm.

Section 43 orders imposed on Muhammad Ali and Jayesh Anjaria were announced by the SRA this morning.

Ali, whose last known address was in High Wycombe, ‘caused or allowed payments totalling £54,500,000 to be improperly made from the bank account of his employer (Axiom Ince Ltd) when he knew or ought to have known that those transfers were improper. In addition, in the same period he caused or allowed that money to be misused or be misappropriated.’ The payments were made between 5 May 2021 and 27 July 2023.

Also, on 16 June 2023, Ali allowed ‘a third party to believe something was true when he knew it was not or had no reason to believe it was’.

Ali’s conduct was ‘serious’, the SRA’s decision notice states. ‘For a period of about 26 months, he arranged the improper transfer of £54,500,000 of client money in breach of Rule 5.1 of the SRA Accounts Rules 2011. He caused or allowed some or all of that money to be misused or misappropriated.’

Ali was ordered to pay a proportion of the SRA’s costs of £600.

Between 1 and 4 August 2023, during the course of a forensic investigation conducted by the SRA, Jayesh Anjaria ‘altered bank statements of Barclays bank such that they contained false and misleading information when he knew, suspected or intended that the SRA and others who might read the bank statements that they would be misled.’

Anjaria’s last-known address was in Edgware, Greater London. His conduct was also ‘serious’, because he ’repeatedly falsified bank statements to show false and misleading information about the account holder, namely that he had more money in his bank account than he actually had. He did so while the SRA was investigating the firm of which the account holder was the sole shareholder. The firm was Axiom Ince Limited.’

Anjaria was also ordered to pay a proportion of the SRA’s costs of £600.

Axiom Ince was shut down by the SRA last year. and it emerged that about £60m in client money had gone missing. Over 1,000 staff lost their jobs.The  solicitors profession has been left to pick up the bill for the debacle through greatly increased contributions to the Compensation Fund.

Earlier this week, umbrella regulator the Legal Services Board published an independent report into the actions of the SRA in the leadup to the collapse which was strongly critical of the regulator. The board has said it will pursue enforcement action against the SRA under the Legal Services Act 2007.

 Former senior managers at Axiom Ince are under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.