A new taskforce has been launched by The Institute of Business Ethics to examine the provision of legal services to overseas oligarchs and kleptocrats.
The group of 12, chaired by Guy Beringer KC, a board member of LegalUK and former senior partner at Allen & Overy, will focus on examining the reputational and ethical risks to the legal profession of taking on such clients.
Focusing on UK firms, the taskforce on business ethics and the legal profession will look at how firms taking on oligarch and kleptocrat clients can be reconciled with rights to representation, professional values, and international obligations such as those in the UN guiding principles on business and human rights.
Formed following the high-profile exit of a number of firms from Russian business after the invasion of Ukraine, the taskforce - which includes legal director of the International Bar Association Sara Carnegie and Kingsley Napley partner in the regulatory team Julie Norris - is expected to share its recommendations with firms, regulators, law makers and other stakeholders within 12 months.
Director of the Institute of Business Ethics, Dr Ian Peters, said the taskforce would ‘examine what is a challenging and complex issue and provide guidance and recommendations that will support the global reputation of the UK’s legal sector’.
He added: ‘There are increasing examples of oligarchs using or looking to use our courts and UK-based firms for their civil proceedings and commercial transactions.
‘This means practitioners are walking a tightrope between professional obligations to provide representation and commercial considerations on one side, and the ethics of representing such individuals and what that means for public perceptions of their firms on the other.
‘I’m delighted that senior members of the legal profession and civil society experts are coming together under Guy Beringer’s chairmanship to examine what is a challenging and complex issue and provide guidance and recommendations that will support the global reputation of the UK’s legal sector.’
Beringer added: ‘There has recently been growing pressure on lawyers to exercise greater ethical judgment in relation both to the clients for whom they will act and the work they undertake for those clients.
‘The long-term interests of the profession and the reputation of the City of London would be well served by greater clarity and consensus on the ethical principles which should apply in civil matters when law firms are taking on new clients or taking new instructions for existing clients.’
Deputy chair Professor Robert Barrington, who is professor of anti-corruption practice for the centre for the study of corruption, said the taskforce was an ‘important step forward’.
He added: ‘It’s an important step forward to have civil society representatives and senior lawyers sitting around the same table.
‘We all have a common interest in working out how to reconcile the business needs of law firms, with the duties of lawyers to act in the public interest, and the rights of victims in faraway countries - which are easily overlooked when the money and transactions come to London.
‘The concern must be that if the legal profession does not get its own house in order, there will be an unwanted alternative such as heavy-handed legislation or some form of international blacklisting.’
The 12 members of the taskforce are: Guy Beringer KC; Robert Barrington, professor of anti-corruption practice for the Centre for the Study of Corruption; Michael Bennett, former partner and general counsel at Linklaters; Sara Carnegie, legal director of the International Bar Association; Sarah de Gay, Master of the City of London Solicitors Company and president of the City of London Law Society; Jonathan Goldsmith, a consultant in European and international legal services; Duncan Hames, director of policy and programmes at Transparency International UK; Susan Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption; Stephen Mayson, centre for ethics and law at University College Longon; Julie Norris, partner in the regulatory team at Kingsley Napley LLP; Patricia Robertson KC; and Jeff Twentyman, chair of sustainability and responsible business at Slaughter and May.
All taskforce members are serving in a personal capacity and the taskforce’s work is funded by the Joffe Trust, which supports civil society leaders to build a ‘fairer world’, and a contribution from Transparency International.
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