Mohammed Asif DIN

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

Mohammed Asif Din, a partner/director of Sovereign Solicitors and Dean Solicitors, transferred at least £42,500 from firm accounts to his own personal accounts while the books recorded the payments as disbursements to a costs draftsman (Mr KT) and Infinity Marketing. He also gave false and inaccurate information in response to three SRA production notices, including denying he benefitted from payments and falsely stating that bank accounts (which were his own) were controlled by Mr KT/IM. He admitted Accounts Rules breaches and breaches of Principles 6, 7 and 8 but denied lack of integrity and dishonesty. The Respondent did not give evidence. The Tribunal rejected his claim that the transfers were repayments of informal loans, found a lack of integrity and made express findings of dishonesty on both allegations (applying the Ivey test to the criminal standard). With no exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal ordered that he be struck off the Roll. The SRA sought costs of £40,460.76 (to be reduced by about £900), but the final costs order is not stated in the provided text.

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No conflict between current clients
• Firm governance, systems and compliance
• Cooperate openly with regulators

Aggravating factors:

• Conduct was deliberate and involved concealment via false accounting entries
• Repeated false/inaccurate statements to the regulator over a period of about 8 months
• Created false accounting records to conceal payments to himself
• Misled staff, partners, auditors, bank and regulator

Mitigating factors:

• Previous good character with no prior disciplinary findings
• No misappropriation of/loss to client money
• Numerous positive character testimonials
• Was helpful/cooperative during the forensic investigation