Lawyers should be put in the dock for accepting oligarchs’ stolen money

Many deplore the amorality of the legal profession in servicing corrupt business people and dictators. But a bigger, more important question needs to be asked. Have lawyers broken the law in doing so?

In recent days, some members of the legal profession have sought to explain the embarrassment of riches earned from wealthy Russians of questionable backgrounds by citing the higher cause of making sure that everyone has access to legal advice.

As one barrister put it: “You wouldn’t name a dictator’s doctor and start claiming that by providing medical services to a patient they are immoral.”

Indeed, you would not – because medical professionals are under an obligation to treat any patient, regardless of who they are, according to their clinical need. Solicitors are not. While anyone accused of a crime is entitled to a defence, regardless of how heinous that crime is or their apparent guilt, solicitors are under no obligation to take on a client who wishes to attack a business rival through the civil courts.

There is only one reason why London’s legal, tax, accountancy and other professional services have been so happy to serve kleptocrats of all nations – money.

Guilty of money laundering

Look at where that money comes from and some awkward questions arise, because people working in the professional services, like anyone else, are subject to laws against money laundering.

In 2011, a young barrister called Jenny Holt – described by the fawning trial judge as “the sort of daughter every parent would be proud of” – was convicted of money laundering in the Isle of Man. Her alleged crime was accepting from a client money that had been stolen to pay the defence fees in a much larger money-laundering case.

The conviction was eventually quashed (after a mistake in the judge’s summing up rendered the conviction unsafe in the eyes of the Privy Council), but no one questioned the fact that a lawyer who knowingly accepts stolen money from a client – even in circumstances where the lawyer is defending their client from a serious criminal charge – constitutes money laundering under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

As one leading legal commentator put it: “The circumstances of [Holt’s] case send real shivers down the spines of professional advisers who have accepted tainted funds as payment for their fees.”