Strike-off for solicitors who helped unregistered barrister steal from clients

Two solicitors who helped a disgraced unregistered barrister to defraud clients of £172,000 have been struck off.

Prince Fomba Goba and Waqas Hassan, solicitors at PG Solicitors trading as Edward Marshall, allowed £172,320 to be paid, without authority from the relevant clients, to a bank account controlled by Yawar Ali Shah.

The money was transferred in 14 payments made between September 2019 and April 2021, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard.

Shah, who was called to the bar in 2006 but did not undertake pupillage, had been convicted at St Albans Crown Court in July 2013 of two counts of conspiracy to defraud. He was sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment.

Between 2012 and 2014, Shah had been involved in various ways with Edward Marshall. Three days after his conviction, he was named in a letter sent by the firm as the office manager for their Wanstead Branch.

The Solicitors Regulation Authority began investigating Edward Marshall and sought information from NatWest about an account it believed was under the firm’s control.

NatWest revealed Shah was the only authorised signatory on the account and the name on the account provided by NatWest to the SRA was “R YAWAR SHAH EDWARD MARSHALL”.

The SRA’s Forensic Investigation Officer’s (FIO) analysis of the account showed that from 23 January 2019 to 13 April 2021, the firm made 86 payments, totalling £1,788,502.81, from its client account to this Shah account.

It also paid £236,839.57 over 124 payments from January 2019 to June 2020, from its office account to the Shah Account.

The 14 payments which the respondents were found to have sent to the Shah account were associated with five clients.

In a written judgment, the SDT tribunal found: ‘In the absence of instructions from the clients to make payments to Mr Shah or any other good reason to make such payments, the natural inference is that Mr Shah directed that the payments should be made to him and the respondents followed such directions.’

The FIO’s analysis of the accounts showed that between June 2018 and March 2020, 24 payments, totalling £232,430, were sent from the Shah account to Goba. 

Some £166,940.37 was sent to Hassan in 65 payments made between January 2018 and January 2021.

The SRA considered it ‘very likely’ that one or more of the payments were mixed with client monies.

Goba and Hassan were found to have provided the SRA with forged documents, and incomplete and misleading information, during their investigation.

They did not engage in the SDT proceedings and neither served any answer to the allegations. They were found to have acted dishonestly and were both struck off.