A solicitor who featured in a Daily Mail undercover sting targeting immigration lawyers was today cleared of alleged wrongdoing by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal.
Muhammad Nazar Hayat, admitted in December 2013, was the owner, manager and director of Lincoln Lawrence Solicitors, in Hounslow, west London. In May 2023 he was covertly recorded during a meeting with three undercover journalists posing as members of an asylum seeker’s family. Two months later, the firm was subject to a Solicitors Regulation Authority intervention.
Hayat appeared before the SDT this week accused of advising a person believed to be a prospective client to provide a false narrative in support of an asylum claim. He was also accused of dishonesty and lack of integrity.
Mansoor Fazli, for Hayat, told the tribunal it was ‘perfectly reasonable for a solicitor to ask questions in terms of the facts and to be led on the facts and then the solicitor take the lead on the law, because he is an expert in the law and advises on the law and, in my submission, that is what has happened in this case’.
He added that Hayat was ‘not challenged on the advice that he believed he was properly entitled to give’ and the ‘facts make it clear the behaviour of the respondent was not dishonest and was not improper in the way that has been suggested’. Fazli told the tribunal that the evidence of the three translators had been ‘undermined which makes this prosecution unsafe’.
The tribunal heard that a finding of dishonesty is the ‘equivalent of a death penalty' in the criminal law context. 'The respondent had enough evidence given to him to propose the advice that he did,' Fazli added. 'There is no proper basis with continuing with the prosecution.'
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The three-person panel retired on Wednesday afternoon and returned with their findings at 2pm on Thursday.
In a brief summary judgment, panel chair William Ellerton said the tribunal had cleared Hayat of the single allegation against him: 'None of the alleged breaches are made out.' The panel accepted that Hayat was ‘exploring step by step what the client's evidence might be’. The meeting with the undercover journalists ‘was still an initial meeting and Mr Hayat made clear throughout these matters would be explored further in a subsequent meeting’.
When Hayat used terms like ‘make’, ‘create’ or ‘make a story’ he was referring to evidence that would need to be brought to the Home Office and ‘was not advising on fabricating evidence,’ Ellerton said. ‘We accept Mr Hayat conducted an initial exploratory meeting. The furthest he went was to rehearse potential arguments at their highest, however he made it clear throughout these matters would be explored further. He did not breach the SRA principles or codes he was alleged to have done.’
Hayat could be seen wiping away tears during the remote hearing. Dismissing the allegation against Hayat, the SDT also rejected his application for costs and made no costs order.
A full written judgment will be published in due course.
Hayat is the second immigration solicitor caught up in the national newspaper’s sting to have the allegations brought against him dismissed by the SDT. South London immigration practitioner Rashid Khan’s career and health were ‘destroyed’ by disciplinary proceedings even though he was found entirely innocent, his counsel Greg Treverton-Jones KC told the Gazette earlier this month.
