A long-standing solicitor has been banned from practice for ‘deliberate, calculated and repeated’ misconduct over the handling of clients’ cash.

John Swindell was struck off after a disciplinary tribunal decided he had breached 13 separate rules governing solicitors’ conduct in relation to the handling of cash affecting five separate property transactions.

His junior partner, Arif Issa, was fined £5,000 and is now senior partner running the law firm in Wellington Street, Blackburn.

The law firm’s former bookeeper Kathleen Chadwick was banned from working for a law firm for her part in the misconduct.

Mr Swindell, born in 1961, has run John Swindell and Company since August 2000 and took Mr Issa on as junior partner in 2009.

Mr Swindell admitted offences including:

  • Failing to keep proper accounting records of clients’ money 
  • Taking fees from clients’ accounts with their authorisation or presenting bills
  • Improperly acting for the seller, buyer and lender in the same transaction
  • Withdrawing money improperly from clients’ accounts
  • Improperly providing banking facilities for clients

Mr Swindell and Mr Issa were disciplined for failing to effectively management the firm leading to the improper payment of £120,000 to an individual from accounts regarding a property transaction which she had nothing to do with and which was never returned.

The tribunal found that the two lawyers had become involved in activities known as “teeming and lading”, transferring funds without authorisation between clients accounts to “mask” cash shortfalls. The misconduct continued even after an investigator from Solicitors Regulation Authority warned Mr Swindell in September 2010, the judgement said.

The newly-published Solicitors’ Disciplinary Tribunal ruling follows a hearing on January 30. It said: “This was not a case where dishonesty had been alleged.

“However the misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated - even after the first stage of the SRA investigation.

“Ultimately, it did not appear any harm had been suffered directly by clients or others but this was due simply to good fortune.

“”His conduct had fallen well below the standard the public expected of solicitors and it was necessary to remove him from the Roll of Solicitors to maintain the confidence of the public in the profession.”

The tribunal ruled that Mr Swindell was “not fit to practise” because his conduct was “at the most serious end of the spectrum” and had “fallen far short of the standard of integrity required of a solicitor. He was struck off immediately and must pay £22,000 costs.

As senior partner, an a solicitor since 1994, the tribunal said he had to take the main blame and dismissed his arguments that he was busy and in some cases he could treat funds belonging to different Asian relatives as “family money”.

The ruling means he can no longer describe himself or practice as a solicitor and is under severe restrictions over engaging in any other form of legal practice.

The tribunal said that Mr Issa, born in 1976 and a solicitor since 2008, was also culpable for several examples of misconduct after he joined the firm in March 2009 and so the “appropriate and proportionate fine” was £5,000 to “mark the seriousness of the breaches which had occurred.” It acknowledged he “had not shown any lack of integrity or personal fault.” He was ordered to pay £6,000 costs.

It banned Ms Chadwick from working in a law firm without SRA permission for taking £300 from the practice’s accounts for her personal use without authorisation and “knowingly and improperly transferring funds between client account ledgers for the purpose of masking a client account shortfall” and drawing up bogus invoices “for the purposes of balancing the firms accounts.”