Ian Gordon Davidson

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

Ian Gordon Davidson, a Scottish solicitor acting in the executry of his late father's estate, was found guilty of professional misconduct on numerous counts including failing to inform RBS of the death, concealing a standard security, failing to pay a loan leading to repossession proceedings, misappropriating £25,000 of Aviva policy proceeds, falsely claiming he was corresponding with Aviva/FOS, encashing premium bonds, failing to insure the estate property and pay bills, failing to account for £44,563, breaching accounts rules by misusing his employers' client accounts, inducing Tesco Bank by fraud to write off a £6,663.32 debt, embezzling Tesco payments, and destroying correspondence to conceal his fraud. The Tribunal expressly found his conduct dishonest applying the Ivey test. As dishonesty leads to strike off in all but exceptional cases, the Tribunal ordered his name struck off the Roll, with liability for expenses (to be taxed) and publicity. At a later hearing, he was ordered to pay the Secondary Complainer £5,000 compensation (max statutory amount) for financial loss (£5,529.13) and non-financial loss (£2,000), plus Tribunal expenses.

Duties found breached:

• Proper basis for allegations
• Honesty
• No taking unfair advantage
• Handle inadvertently received material
• No improper use of client money
• Competence
• No baseless or threatened misconduct report

Aggravating factors:

• Misconduct persisted over a long period
• Repeated conduct across different sources of funds
• Lack of remorse or insight; said he would do it all again
• Concealment of wrongdoing / planned misconduct
• Breach of family's trust
• Danger to the public

Mitigating factors:

• Entered into joint minute and admitted some facts
• Difficult financial and personal circumstances at the time
• No previous conduct findings