Letter: Britain is damaged by the provision of legal services to dictators

Letter updates

Sign up to myFT Daily Digest to be the first to know about Letter news.

I strongly sympathise with the concerns expressed by I Stephanie Boyce, the president of the Law Society of England and Wales (Opinion, September 2), that the UK’s international reputation for respecting the rule of law is under threat. However, what she omits to mention is the role that the UK’s lawyers have themselves played in this unwelcome scenario.

The government’s own national security assessments have regularly cited the UK’s role as a safe haven for the proceeds of global corruption as a key national security threat. Those assessments have identified “professional enablers” as playing a key role in facilitating global corruption. That includes the provision of legal services to corrupt dictators and oligarchs and silencing critics through litigation.

The legal profession’s defence of itself has been that all clients are equal before the law, that access to justice is a right and that even corrupt oligarchs are innocent until proven guilty. However, the victims of corruption around the world do not see it in the same way. They see funds plundered from their country being placed in the UK — often via its crown dependencies and overseas territories — and the same money being used to hire top lawyers to keep it safe. They stand no chance of being proven guilty in their own countries as they write the laws and control the courts.

This is a conundrum with no easy answer. On the one hand, we can all agree that access to justice is critical. On the other, it is clear that a number of law firms, from the magic circle downwards, are having navigational problems with their moral compass. They represent clients who are highly lucrative, but should fail any reasonable due diligence test.

At present, the legal profession’s response is simply one of denial. This discredits the profession at a time when we most need it to be in good standing. Although there is no easy answer, an acknowledgment of the problem is usually the first stage in finding a solution.

Professor Robert Barrington
Centre for the Study of Corruption
University of Sussex, Brighton, UK