George Constantine Panagopoulos

Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision

Dr Panagopoulos, managing partner of Reed Smith's Athens office, faced three allegations relating to expenses from a personal London trip charged to client files. The Tribunal dismissed allegations 1.1 and 1.2 (instructing his secretary to bill clients) as fatally flawed in drafting, finding he had instructed expenses be 'charged' to files (not billed) and then written off. However, the Tribunal found allegations 2 and 3 proved: he altered billing documents (DBRs) by adding 'purge/reverse' annotations shortly before a 26 February 2020 investigation meeting to make it appear he had given written instructions to charge expenses back to himself, and then falsely represented at that meeting that the annotations were made at the same time as the original 'squiggly lines.' The Tribunal made express findings of dishonesty under Principle 4. Finding no exceptional circumstances, it struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £20,000 (reduced from £23,925 due to the dismissed allegations).

Duties found breached:

• Comply with rules of foreign jurisdictions
• Honesty
• No taking unfair advantage

Aggravating factors:

• Proven dishonesty
• Deliberate and calculated conduct
• Abuse of position of trust and authority
• Sought to place blame on his secretary (Ms Kourkouvela) and Mr Jeffcott
• Knew conduct breached obligation to protect public and reputation of profession

Mitigating factors:

• Misconduct limited to amendment of documents and untruth about timing
• Impressive testimonials from eminent members of the profession
• Long and distinguished career
• Full cooperation with the investigation and proceedings
• Conduct took place over a relatively short period
• Not planned from the outset