By Lucy Caulkett
The partner of a law firm has been billed £85,000 bill for failing to carry out even an internet search to check the background of his clients in relation to a disciplinary hearing.
The hearing was in relation to a huge data leak from former Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca in which a large amount of money was laundered due to the solicitor’s failings.
Khalid Mohammed Sharif, partner at Belgravia firm Child & Child was fined £45,000 by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, and also ordered to pay costs of £40,000 . Two of Sharif’s clients were daughters of the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. The women set up a British Virgin Islands-incorporated company to help manage two properties in Knightsbridge, London. The properties were worth an estimated £60m.
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The solicitor’s admission in 2005 not to have undertaken enhanced customer due diligence, despite having not met the clients was very unprofessional. Sharif was the firm’s money laundering reporting officer (MLRO). The judgement said his position should have heightened his sense of his obligations, and his awareness of the risks’. Details of the offshore company came to light in April 2016 , after the Panama Papers leak. Sharif also failed to take adequate check the women he was dealing with to know their identity, this deemed as a reckless omission on his part.
The solicitor, admitted in 2005 that he did not undertaking enhanced customer due diligence even though he had not met the clients. Sharif was the firm’s money laundering reporting officer (MLRO).
‘The respondent was wholly culpable for his misconduct. Further, he was the MLRO at the firm. This should have heightened his sense of his obligations, and his awareness of the risks,’ the judgment said.
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