Hospitals contacted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority had no records of patients said to be represented by one-time legal aid giant Blavo & Co, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal has heard.
More than seven years after the firm was shut down by the regulator, counsel for the SRA told the tribunal yesterday that in June 2015, former director John Blavo provided or facilitated or encouraged the provision of falsified documents to the Legal Aid Agency, including but not limited to client files, medical reports and tribunal documents.
Blavo, who was not present or represented at yesterday’s hearing, has denied all allegations.
Andrew Tabachnik KC, for the SRA, took the tribunal through several email chains and document attachments.
The name of ‘patient one’ was misspelt in a first-tier tribunal document, Tabachnik said. ‘It is not a very good start when trying to assess the authenticity this document. It’s a clear indication this has come from not the first-tier tribunal but from Mr Blavo and his co-conspirators in the midst of a panic to try and come up with files in response to the Legal Aid Agency’s random audit,’ he said.
The tribunal heard that the solicitor named as patient one’s representative said in a witness statement that she had no knowledge of the client file and did not recognise the patient's name. The regulator contacted the relevant hospital as part of an SRA investigation and told there was no record of the patient.
On ‘evolving drafts’ of documents found in Blavo’s email box, Tabachnik said: ‘I cannot think of an honest explanation, a proper explanation, why those would be there just before the third batch [of files] is handed over [to the LAA].’
A comparison of patients 3 and 17 would find ’95-98% of the documents are word for word, comma for comma the same, just a few details, a few dates and locations which are sometimes changed’, he continued.
On patient 5, Tabachnik said: ‘We made enquiries with the named hospital about patient 5. One of the witnesses who would have been called made a statement. The essence of it is there is no record they could find of patient 5… The fact time after time there is no record of these patients is pretty telling.’
On patient 6, Tabachnik showed the tribunal a document containing a ‘mish-mash’ of references to patient 6 and patient 20. ‘It’s quite clear Mr Blavo is at the heart of it, directing operations and in this up to his eyeballs,’ he said.
Quoting from a medical report that referred to the patient both in ‘his’ and ‘her’ terms, Tabachnik said: ‘This crude and brazen fraud was also incompetent. Not just incompetent because they did this through the firm’s server but documents on their face were so rushed and put together in such a hurry that even these basic errors were not worked through. It was very crude and very poorly executed.’
The hearing continues.
