Solicitor struck off after £600k ‘misused or lost’ – tribunal

A SOLICITOR who misused or lost close to £600,000 of client money was being threatened by blackmailers, a tribunal has heard.

Zahid Khan, of Birmingham law firm Janson Solicitors, has now been struck off following a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.

It found his actions had a “devastating effect” on the profession. As well as being struck off, Khan was ordered to pay costs of £35,000.

The hearing was told clients have now been recompensed from the compensation fund of the profession’s own regulators, the Solicitors Regulation Authority.

In all, £595,000 has been paid out. The SRA shut down Khan’s firm at the end of October 2019.

The tribunal was told Khan used money taken in for conveyancing transactions to make payments related to other clients and transferred cash to his personal bank account.

Accounts showed some of the money was used to trade on financial spread bet platform IG. com.

Between March and October, 2017, Khan ploughed £380,000 into IG.com. Only £350,000 was returned.

Through his own legal representative, Khan said he acted while in severe financial difficulties and in poor health.

“He had borrowed £25,000 from a party in London in relation to which he had experienced ‘‘ongoing blackmail’and threats to his safety and that of his family”, a report stated.

It added: “The Respondent (Khan), by his own admission, ran into financial difficulty. He accepted that there were shortages on the client account. The admitted deficiency in the client account was submitted to strongly support the inference that the Respondent had misused client money because of financial pressures.

“The Tribunal found that the Respondent had used money received from various clients for transactions of different clients.

“The Tribunal had found that the Respondent had paid client money into an account in his own name and had misused and/or lost in excess of £590,000 of client money.

“The Tribunal had been referred to correspondence sent on the Respondent’s behalf in which it was accepted that there was a client shortfall that the Respondent was unable to remedy. The Tribunal accepted that the bank statements to which it was referred showed, on the balance of probabilities, that the Respondent transferred client money to his own account for onward transmission to an online financial trading and spread betting platform.

“The Respondent had not sought to provide an explanation or defence of his conduct.”