Anal Sheikh

• Application 9664-2007
• Admitted 1988
• Hearings 5-7, 12-16, January, 22-24, 28, 29 April and 1, 5 May 2009
• Reasons 29 June 2009

The SDT ordered that the respondent, of London NW9, should be struck off the roll. The respondent had transferred monies from client account to office account, purportedly as costs in circumstances when she knew or ought to have known that such transfers were excessive, improper and/or unreasonable; she had improperly asked an employee to sign a bank document that was misleading; she had improperly withdrawn the sum of £254,000 from client account in breach of the Solicitors Accounts Rules 1998; she had improperly used clients’ funds in the sum of £254,000 for her own purposes; having improperly withdrawn funds from client account, she had failed to return those funds promptly to client account; she had failed to account for a residual credit balance; the books of accounts of the practice had not been properly written up; monies had been transferred from client account, other than as permitted by the rules; she had utilised clients’ funds for her own benefit; she had failed properly and/or at all to account to clients for interest on monies held on client account; and she had failed promptly or at all to reply to correspondence from the Law Society. (The SDT did not consider allegations that the respondent had improperly failed promptly and/or at all to comply with directions made by the adjudication panel of the Law Society to compensate a client for inadequate professional services, and that she had failed to comply with the directions of the adjudication panel of the Legal Complaints Service session 25 January 2007, or the facts upon which they were based. The SDT ruled that it would not hear evidence or make any ruling on those two allegations, the consideration of which was deferred. That was without prejudice to the right of the applicant to make further application confined to those allegations relating to the respondent’s failure to comply with directions made by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.)

The SDT had no doubt that the respondent had, as had other solicitors who found themselves accused of dishonesty, a fierce belief that she had done nothing professionally wrong, let alone done any thing dishonest. In the present case, that had led the respondent to refuse to acknowledge obvious shortcomings which unfortunately had damaged her credibility and had made such defence to those allegations as she had indicated to the SDT unconvincing. It was not enough for the respondent merely to assert that she was honest particularly where, as in the present case, she had refused to provide explanations or evidence which pointed to honest rather than a dishonest conduct. The respondent had undoubtedly found the proceedings stressful and it seemed to the SDT that her unwillingness to acknowledge any professional misconduct had led her to adopt the attitude that everyone else was in the wrong and could not have acted from proper motives or with necessary competence. The SDT took the view that the respondent’s arrogant disregard for fundamental requirements of practice had led her to adopt a stand where she neither knew nor cared whether she was exercising a proper stewardship of client funds, billing at fair and reasonable levels, and achieving full compliance with the Solicitors Accounts Rules. The tribunal had seen no evidence that the SRA had acted other than in accordance with its public duty to require the SDT to hear and adjudicate upon the application and it and its advisers, although from time to time provoked by the respondent, had not been shown to have any improper motive in bringing and pursuing the application. It was a very sad case but the SDT had no doubt that the respondent had, in accordance with the legal authorities binding on it, to be held to have acted with conscious impropriety and with dishonesty. The respondent was ordered to pay costs to be assessed if not agreed, and was ordered to pay interim costs of £100,000.