Ejaz Ahmad

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

Ejaz Ahmad, a solicitor and partner at LG Law Chambers, faced eight allegations arising from improper payments from client account causing a minimum shortage of £1,203,276.66. The Tribunal found allegations 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.6 and 1.7 proved, including breach of Principle 2 (lack of integrity) on allegation 1.1. It dismissed allegations 1.5 and 1.8, and expressly did NOT find dishonesty proved, as it could not be sure the Respondent knowingly made improper payments. The Respondent had treated himself as an 'honorary' partner, lent his name to the Firm, and abandoned his responsibilities. The Tribunal struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £20,000. (A note records that the High Court later allowed the SRA's cross-appeal on dishonesty in respect of allegation 1.1.)

Duties found breached:

• Proper basis for allegations
• No improper use of client money
• Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
• Report serious misconduct of others

Aggravating factors:

• Permitted improper payment of over £1.2 million of client money to unconnected third parties
• Had suspicions about Sale 2 yet made payments without proper enquiries
• Granted unsupervised access to client account to ST, a former partner
• Significant harm to clients and to the reputation of the profession; Compensation Fund received claims of approx £1.8m and paid out over £1.2m
• Irresponsible and wholly unacceptable attitude to regulatory obligations; complete abstention of duties

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary findings
• Suffered from various health conditions including depression
• Appeared to have been drawn into the Firm and was arguably a victim of deceit; someone impersonated him
• Naive and lacked ability to manage a firm

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]