A solicitor who featured in the Daily Mail undercover sting targeting immigration lawyers advised a reporter whom he believed to be a prospective client to provide a false narrative in order to seek asylum, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard today.
Muhammad Nazar Hayat, admitted in December 2013, was, at the time of the allegations, registered as the owner, manager and director of Lincoln Lawrence Solicitors, in Hounslow, London. He is alleged to have breached paragraph 1.4 of the code of conduct for solicitors and principles 1, 2, 4 and 5 of the SRA Principles 2019.
Hayat denies the allegation.
The SDT was told 81.36% of the firm’s income was derived from immigration. Michael Collis, for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said: ‘That would suggest the respondent would have been well used to dealing with immigration clients. The facts of this case originate from an undercover sting conducted by the Daily Mail newspaper.’
Collis told the three-person panel that the newspaper’s parameters for its undercover sting involved instructions that the reporter could not ask leading questions, could not suggest making an asylum application and would make clear there was no basis for a legal claim for asylum.
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Hayat, 55, was covertly recorded meeting the three undercover journalists, posing as a father, son and nephew. The reporters claimed the ‘nephew’ had travelled from India.
Collis said: ‘Rather than being told there was a potential client fleeing prosecution, what the respondent was being told [was] that this was a potential client who had simply travelled to the UK to try and improve his life.’
Reading from translated transcripts, Collis said Hayat asked if the reporter posing as the nephew had links to any political organisations. Collis said: ‘When asked for clarification by one of the undercover reporters, the respondent says ”Khalistan”. The translation, all three translators agree, Khalistan is confirmed as a proscribed terrorist group within India.’
Reading from the translated transcript, Collis said Hayat told the undercover reporters that ‘if he is of good character, they will ask him to go back’ and ‘if you want to stay here you must have fear of prosecution…or fear of assassination or anything’ and ‘we have to make evidence’ during the meeting.
Collis said: ‘The assertion that he does not have anything, that they have to make evidence, that they have to create something is agreed by both…translations.’
He added: ‘The nephew, in reality, was no more than an economic migrant. We can see Mr [Paul] Samrai [one of the undercover journalists] taking the respondent back to that point. “That is why he came, that is why he came for a job, that is true” and the respondent’s immediate response is to take is back to the false narrative “yes, yes, the agent made promises of a job…he is a victim of human trafficking as well”.’
‘The respondent is spoon-feeding the reporters the type of information that they would need to advance in order to submit a claim for asylum.’
Lincoln Lawrence Solicitors Limited was intervened into in July 2023.
The substantive hearing continues.
