Maureen Chinedu Agada & Ademola Weston

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

The First Respondent (Maureen Chinedu Agada), a partner and MLRO at Maus Solicitors, made improper payments and transfers totalling £226,500 from client account to third parties and the office account without client authority, in connection with a property purchase for Ms S. The Tribunal expressly found dishonesty under the Ivey test, rejecting her defence of duress. She also failed to record transactions properly and failed to have sufficient regard to anti-money laundering duties. She was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay £8,000 costs (80% of the £10,000 assessed). The AML policy allegation (1.4) was not proved. The Second Respondent (Ademola Weston) admitted failing to prevent the improper payments and bookkeeping failures; he was reprimanded with no order for costs given his inability to pay. The Tribunal assessed total costs at £10,000 (reduced from claimed £11,257.49).

Duties found breached:

• Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
• AML and crime-prevention compliance
• Firm governance, systems and compliance
• No conflict between current clients
• No improper use of client money
• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty
• Misconduct continued over a period of time and was repeated (28 occasions)
• Position of trust as partner, MLRO and to client
• Improperly transferred more than £250,000 from client account
• Knew or ought to have known conduct was in material breach of obligations

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary matters
• Did not seek to blame the Second Respondent / accepted responsibility to an extent

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["unverified_suspension_months=411257.49"]