A solicitor who failed to carry out money-laundering checks on £8.8 million has been struck off for ‘widespread and fundamental non-compliance’ with AML rules.
William Joseph Harris, admitted in April 1980, operated as a sole practitioner and worked mostly in residential conveyancing, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority had been raising concerns across the profession about firm-wide risk assessments (FWRA). Harris responded in December 2019 to a notice asking whether his firm had one in place, to which he incorrectly said he did.
However during a 2023 interview with an SRA investigator - after the true position had come to light - Harris admitted he had not had, and still did not have, a FWRA in place.
When the SRA began investigating Harris’s firm, he had provided a forensic investigator with what he purported to be a FWRA, but in interview he accepted it was not an FWRA and it had been ‘located from the HMRC website’ and that he did not actually know what an FWRA was.
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The SDT heard that Harris’s failures at the firm regarding the required source of funds/wealth checks concerned 63 clients and conveyancing transactions totalling over £8m for the period from 1 January 2022 to 30 September 2023 totalling.
‘For the six years the respondent was its sole practitioner, the firm was vulnerable to the risk of being manipulated for the use of money laundering and/ or terrorist financing, the very mischief the MLRs 2017 are designed to prevent’, an SDT decision records.
‘The respondent’s admitted dishonesty regarding the FWRA confirmation was considered a very serious example of dishonesty given his position as a solicitor and compliance officer for legal practice, in a high-risk area, and in response to a direct regulatory inquiry. The widespread and fundamental non-compliance with critical regulations represented systemic failures throughout the six years of his sole practice.
‘Clients suffered actual harm through being deprived of over £100,000 in residual balances for years. The delays in reporting and misleading information prevented the SRA from gaining full knowledge of the issues sooner, thereby delaying intervention and allowing the risk to client money to persist.’
