Former solicitor Soophia Khan has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for contempt of court – but an application for a stay means the long-running legal fight between Khan and the Solicitors Regulation Authority continues.
The committal hearing at the High Court was partly held in private. A sanction judgment was then handed down in open court.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Leech said: ‘The court has shown a considerable degree of indulgence to Ms Khan both in relation to the late service of evidence and the adjournment of hearings.’
He added: ‘In my first judgment I considered Ms Khan’s contempt of court to be serious. Regrettably, nothing has changed since I gave judgment, except that Ms Khan’s intervention challenge has failed and she has been struck off as a solicitor.’
He added: ‘She was ordered to deliver up the files and, if she could not do so, to explain why. The explanation which she gave was inadequate and, in some cases, deliberately false.’
The judgment noted that Khan ‘has served the sentence…imposed for the breaches of the earlier orders’ and that she should not be punished again ‘for past breaches of those orders’.
But Leech added: ‘It is not a case where the court is considering a second sentence for continuing or further breaches of the same order. The continued harmful effect on Ms Khan’s clients and the necessity of ensuring that the SRA is not frustrated in carrying out its statutory functions are powerfully militating against the argument that no further sanction should be imposed.’
Khan’s ‘motive was to take a stand and defy the SRA’. She had previously been jailed for contempt in January last year.
Handing down a 12-month prison sentence today, the court took into account the harm which Khan’s ‘breaches of the order have continued to cause to her former clients’ as well as the need for a deterrent. The judgment said: ‘Ms Khan has both attracted and courted publicity. It is important that her sentence should discourage other solicitors or former solicitors from failing to comply with schedule 1.’
After listening to legal argument, Leech told the court he would give Khan 42 days at liberty or until an application for a stay to the Court of Appeal had been determined, if an application is made.
Phillip Ahlquist, for the SRA, asked for a costs order to be made. He said: ‘The grand total is £160,000 - £134,000 plus VAT comprises £88,000 for attendance and work documents, counsel fees and other expenses.’ Ahlquist told the court the fees were charged at a rate of £135 an hour, ‘a very low hourly rate’.
Leech made an order for an interim payment of £100,000 but said he would ‘stay the execution of all costs orders’. This means Khan’s prison sentence and the obligation on her to pay costs have both been deferred.
This episode is the latest in a long legal battle between the regulator and Khan, pictured above, who was once chair of the Law Society’s civil justice committee, over documents that were not handed over during an intervention into Khan’s former firm. Khan told a previous hearing she no longer had any of the sought-after items in her possession.
