Two solicitors and a paralegal - including a former local law society president - were charged with money laundering and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice last week.

Burnley-based Basil Dearing, Keighley-based John Broughton and Liverpool paralegal Noel Tully - who will all appear before Preston Magistrates' Court on 15 April - denied the charges this week.

The three were arrested last June by National Crime Squad officers assisted by Lancashire Constabulary (see [2003] Gazette, 3 July, 3).

A statement from the partners of Mr Dearing's firm, SFN Solicitors, said: 'Basil Dearing has been a well-respected solicitor in Burnley for many years and is known both to us - and to members of the profession - as a man of immense integrity.'

The SFN statement said that following his arrest Mr Dearing, the past president of the Burnley and Pendle Law Society, was interviewed extensively about a number of conveyancing transactions carried out for one client several years ago.

It said the firm was 'disappointed that the police have decided that he should be charged...

We are confident that he will be able to persuade a jury of his innocence.

The partners and staff are extremely concerned for him and his family who have had to deal with this serious unresolved matter for such a long time.'

Sole practitioner Mr Broughton said: 'The allegations are denied and will be strenuously defended.

The circumstances involve a single conveyancing transaction of relatively low value more than six years ago.

I completely deny any wrongdoing.

Such police action strikes at the integrity of the profession.'

Brian Jackson, the managing partner of Liverpool-based Brian Jackson & Co, who is representing his paralegal, Noel Tully, said: 'The allegations against my client are that over six years ago, at the request of a solicitor in a different firm, he arranged for various conveyancing documents to be signed by a client of his then firm, who was in custody.

All allegations of criminal conduct are strenuously denied by him.'

Jeremy Fleming