A solicitor who kept clients in the dark about their immigration status – and even fabricated a letter purporting to be from the Home Office to cover his tracks – has been struck off the roll.

The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that Tom Kwing Ming Li dishonestly misled two clients into believing their applications for indefinite leave to remain in the UK had been submitted. He then gave updates over the course of 10 years about the progress of these applications while the clients remained in the UK unlawfully.

The tribunal heard that in one of the cases, the client made attempts to retrieve her passport and marriage certificate which she had provided to Li. She never receive a copy of her file nor her original documents and the matter remained unresolved for six years after her visa had expired. During this time she was unable to return to China to visit family or leave the UK at all, and was denied the chance to attend her father’s funeral.

In 2015, after one of the clients had instructed a barrister to secure the return of her passport, Li forwarded a letter purportedly from the UK Border Agency saying it was working to retrieve the document and would confirm a date in due course.

The UK Border Agency had actually ceased to exist in 2013 and the Home Office could find no record of any such letter being sent. The tribunal found this letter was fabricated and denied Li’s assertion that he had been sent the letter by an appointed agent.

The tribunal said that statements about progress reports of the applications were ‘eminently misleading and definitively untrue’. Li had been instructed to make applications for permanent residence but the Home Office found that no application was ever received.

Li, admitted in 2006, worked for Surrey firms Bells Potter Solicitors and Harrison Li Solicitors during the relevant period. He had failed to attend the tribunal hearing and made an unsuccessful application for an adjournment. The tribunal said he had the opportunity to discuss an agreed outcome with the SRA over the course of four and a half years but did so only a matter of days before what was the ninth listing of the substantive hearing. He was struck off and ordered to pay £37,500 costs.

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