Devandran Karunakaran

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

Mr Karunakaran, a solicitor practising as a foreign lawyer in Singapore, was convicted in November 2019 of four offences (three counts of outraging modesty of women in a hotel bar and one count of threatening/abusive words toward a bar manager) with three further offences taken into consideration, all arising from a drunken incident on 16 May 2018. The Tribunal found the touching of the three women was sexually motivated (in pursuit of sexual gratification) and that he used his status as a lawyer to intimidate the bar manager. It found breaches of Principle 2 (lack of integrity) and Principle 6 (disrepute) of the SRA Overseas Principles 2013. No dishonesty was alleged or found. The Tribunal also refused the SRA's application to make submissions on sanction. He was fined £9,000 and ordered to pay costs of £23,550.

Duties found breached:

• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No unlawful discrimination or harassment
• Act in the client's best interests
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Criminal offences were involved
• The offences were deliberate and repeated, albeit on the same occasion
• There was a sexual motivation
• Sought to put blame on the bar manager (Mr D), showing incomplete insight
• Knew or ought to have known conduct materially breached obligations to protect the reputation of the profession

Mitigating factors:

• Wrote letters of apology to complainants
• Self-reported the matter to the SRA
• Single episode of relatively brief duration in the context of a previously unblemished career
• A degree of insight (though incomplete)
• Co-operated and engaged with the SRA
• Made some admissions
• Unlikely to be any repeat of the conduct
• Delay in dealing with the matter