Miguel Jose Roure Lopez

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

Miguel Jose Roure Lopez, a Registered European Lawyer formerly practising at Goldberg Segalla Global LLP, faced Rule 5 and Rule 7 allegations. The Tribunal proceeded in his absence and dismissed his jurisdictional challenges (res judicata, criminal prejudicality, EU Judgments Regulation). On the Rule 5 allegations, it found he sent misleading emails to a client's debtor purporting his personal/business RBS account was the firm's client trust account, caused an inappropriate transfer of client funds into that account, and misled his firm about the transfer. On the Rule 7 allegations, it found he transferred £61,285 from a client company (ECS Ltd) BBVA account and £12,656.89 from its PayPal account to his own accounts without consent, failed to advise client CGG about purported investments, and borrowed £47,000 and €9,100 from CGG with an own-interest conflict and no independent advice. Dishonesty was expressly found on all allegations except the conflict allegation (1.4). The Tribunal struck him off the Register of European Lawyers and made a costs order in favour of the SRA (amount not stated in the extracted text).

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Act in the client's best interests
• No conflict between current clients
• No improper use of client money

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty
• Misconduct deliberate, calculated and repeated over a period of time
• Concealment and attempts to deflect blame onto others
• Personal financial benefit/gain at the heart of the misconduct
• Breach of position of trust (GS, FO, CGG and MT)
• Experienced lawyer operating at partner level
• Substantial and serious harm; monies misappropriated
• Complete lack of insight; fought every point and made unsubstantiated attacks on witnesses

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary findings
• The £183,000 was repaid within a few days (albeit under pressure from GS)