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"I am confident that if the SRA's conduct is scrutinised it will be found wanting owing to some serious impropriety."

But how often is the SRA's conduct scrutinised? Virtually never: it won't disclose the information which allows that to happen, journalists won't spend the time doing investigative work and the Legal Services Board does not have the wit/inclination to scrutinise anything remotely complicated. If dissatisfied members of the public (such as the investors) try to hold it to account, it fights a war of attrition using its huge resources.

The SRA has a massive vested interest in saying that this was not the ordinary work of solicitors, because that is its basis for avoiding payments (possibly of around £33million) under the Compensation Fund. If it sticks to that stance, the High Court is the forum for challenging it. Presumably, investors' argument would be that this was the kind of work which solicitors do, because there was believed to be an underlying construction project and investors were led to believe that Sanders would conduct some "due diligence" before releasing payments. The problem is that there is already an SDT decision (and a High Court decision on appeal) which indicates that this was a case of solicitors allowing their accounts to be used as a banking facility.