A retired City partner has been fined almost £25,000 for allowing the client account to be used for non-legal payments.
According to a Solicitors Regulation Authority decision notice, Jay Allan Tooker, then a partner with Holman Fenwick Willan and co-head of the firm’s yacht department, was acting in 2021 for a client in respect of the seizure of a vessel.
Tooker provided advice on how this client might retrieve the yacht as well as on outstanding sums of money due to a port authority and to unrelated creditors.
He accepted that he authorised 22 payments over 10 months through the client account worth hundreds of thousands of pounds for crew salaries, hardstanding, management fees, storage fees and insurance payments. None of the payments was part of the regulated legal services that the firm had provided to the client.
The issue came to light during an internal audit of ‘know your client’ checks, when the firm looked into payments that had been made from the monies held on its client account for this matter.
Tooker admitted allowing the account to be used to provide banking facilities and authorising the payments. This was in breach of SRA accounts rules and a breach of the principle to act in a way that upholds public trust and confidence in the solicitors’ profession.
The SRA accepted that Tooker, who retired in March this year, had co-operated fully with its investigation, had shown genuine insight into the failings that occurred and did not in practice cause actual harm or loss to the client or any third party. He has been admitted to the roll since 1989, with no previous regulatory history and no current matters outstanding, so the risk of repetition is low.
The regulator added: ‘Mr Tooker’s conduct showed a disregard for his regulatory obligations to exercise proper management over client account money. The lack of control and proper oversight of the client account led to the account being repeatedly used to provide banking facilities.’
The fine was set at 5% of Tooker’s gross annual income and was reduced by 25% to take account of his early admissions and cooperation. He was fined £24,862 and agreed to pay £1,350 costs. The fine will be paid, as is standard, to the Treasury rather than to the SRA.
