Kessar Nabi

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

Kessar Nabi, a sole practitioner and the firm's COLP and COFA, was found to have made payments from client account when insufficient funds were held and to have made over/duplicate transfers from client to office account between July 2016 and May 2017, creating a client account shortage of £31,573.97 which he failed to remedy. He failed to carry out reconciliations, ran the firm while in serious financial difficulty (debts exceeding £100,000 including £57,454.79 to HMRC) attempting to settle debts with worthless Promissory Notes, failed to notify the SRA promptly of financial difficulties, and failed to cooperate with the FI Officer. The Tribunal found dishonesty proved beyond reasonable doubt in relation to Allegation 1.1. The Respondent did not attend; the hearing proceeded in his absence. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £10,379.55.

Duties found breached:

• Honesty
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty
• Misconduct was deliberate, calculated and repeated
• Misconduct continued over a significant period of time
• Respondent knew or ought to have known he was in material breach of his obligations
• Motivated by self-interest including personal financial gain
• Breach of trust to clients and creditors
• Element of concealment via failure to reconcile ledgers