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@Marshall Hall & Anonymous

So you are stating that it was 850 investors own fault for investing in a scheme that sounded too good to be true - I sincerely hope you are not a practising solicitor with such a brutal and immoral attitude. Investors were not to know it was a fraud.

The Ecohouse director has been barred from holding directorships for 9 years by the Insolvency Service for misrepresentation of the investment scheme, its supposed security and his inability to account for large sums transferred overseas (in contrast the SRA only fined him £10k and gave him a 1 year suspension).The solicitors operated in a conflict of interests and gave legitimacy to a fraudulent scheme and supposed legal protection (but neglected to provide a legal service or advise hundreds of clients that they should seek alternative legal advice). Ecohouse director was freelancing at the solicitor firm whilst acting as Ecohouse director, and his daughter was working as an escrow agent at the solicitor firm, apparently unaware that her father was Ecohouse director! You couldn't get a more incestuous arrangement. His daughter received no penalty for releasing £millions in escrow funds to her father. Ecohouse clients understandably believed the solicitor firm was protecting their funds, but their trust was betrayed because the solicitors were crooked and released funds from escrow without checking veracity of trigger documents and breached hundreds of escrow agreements. The solicitors were found to have breached multiple SRA principles at trial.

A client appoints a solicitor for legal protection (yes,even against fraudulent schemes). Had the solicitor firm fulfilled their obligations listed in escrow contracts, their clients would have been protected against the fraud; it's as simple as that.

The SRA don`t appear stupid when the SDT overrides them and bring a lesser penalty because it appears the SRA made every attempt to bring harsher penalties. In my opinion the whole purpose of the article is to make it appear that it is not the SRA's fault when inadequate penalties are brought as a consequence of the SRA failing to allege dishonesty in client fund misappropriation cases. In fact it is the SRA's fault because they have created a grey area around dishonesty in the knowledge that PII won't indemnify acts of dishonesty. The SRA dictate insurer's terms, so are wholly responsible for the shortfall in consumer protection when the SRA neglects to allege dishonesty in order to avoid claims from the SRACF, but PII cover is still declined.