A solicitor has been struck off the roll for ‘manifest incompetence’ which allowed a 65-year-old man to give away his home to fraudsters.
The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that Mohinuz Zaman failed to take the most basic steps to ensure there was no conflict in acting for both parties to the transaction despite the risk being ‘so blatant’.
Zaman tried to argue this was a single episode in an otherwise unblemished 19-year career, but the tribunal said his professional failings had helped create the environment allowing the fraud. There was ‘no confidence’ that he would not repeat these failings and he showed ‘no meaningful insight’ into his misconduct.
The judgment said: ‘The tribunal had profound concerns that this lack of insight coupled with the manifest incompetence in the circumstances in which it had been found, notwithstanding the findings relating to a single file several years ago, meant that Mr Zaman posed a very serious and continuing risk to the public and the reputation of the profession.’
The matter began in 2014 when several people attended the office of Zaman’s firm, C&G Solicitors in Birmingham. One of the group was 26 and another was 65. The older client said he wished to transfer the property to the younger man for no consideration as a ‘gift of love and affection’. The transfer was completed within three months.
The tribunal heard that the handwritten note from the first meeting contained ‘minimal information’ about the clients. There was no record on the file of any individual meetings with either client.
The SRA submitted that Zaman failed to pick up on any red flags, including the age difference between the parties, the absence of any apparent family connection, the absence of any information about the nature of the relationship between the parties, the purported instruction that the transfer was for nil consideration and the presence of other unidentified (and apparently unrelated) parties to the transaction at the first meeting.
The tribunal found that the potential conflict of interest was ‘glaringly obvious’ and that any solicitor should have recognised the ‘profound risks’ to the older client of this arrangement. In January 2020, following guilty pleas, two rogue traders were sentenced to 54 months’ imprisonment for fraud and three years’ imprisonment for stalking the transferor respectively.
Zaman denied manifest incompetence on the basis that there had not been any indicators that the instructions were untoward, he had identified the conflict and applied the firm’s usual approach, met with both clients independently, orally advised the client to obtain independent legal advice and ensured that he signed a statutory declaration before an independent solicitor.
The tribunal said Zaman was not a credible witness and described his evidence as ‘vague and evasive’. He was struck off and ordered to pay £20,000. An allegation of misconduct against the firm was found not proved and no order was made as to costs.
