Mohammed Shariful Islam & Another

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

The SDT found First Respondent Mohammed Shariful Islam acted dishonestly across numerous Barclays and Alliance & Leicester conveyancing transactions, certifying inflated purchase prices to lenders, failing to apply mortgage funds to purchases, breaching undertakings, using client account as a banking facility, and diverting surplus funds to third parties including a company he controlled. He was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay £156,750 costs (95% of £165,000). The Second Respondent, a newly qualified salaried partner found to have signed Certificates of Title without proper familiarisation and breached accounts rules (no dishonesty), was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £8,250 costs (not enforceable without leave).

Duties found breached:

• Act in the client's best interests
• Disclose material information to client
• No conflict between current clients
• No improper use of client money
• Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
• Safeguard documents and limit liens
• Supervise staff and delegated work

Aggravating factors:

• Systematic dishonesty by First Respondent
• Widespread misconduct involving vast sums and mortgage fraud on a massive scale
• Inflated purchase prices certified to lenders with surplus funds paid to third parties and to a company (Feroza Housing Ltd) in which First Respondent had a personal interest
• Forged signatures referenced on documents
• Failure to engage with proceedings and failure to file accountant's reports

Mitigating factors:

• Second Respondent: no dishonesty, naive and trusting, newly qualified and inexperienced
• Second Respondent marginalised and manipulated/bullied by the dominant First Respondent
• Second Respondent cooperative during investigation
• Second Respondent's difficult personal background, poor health (depression) and dire financial circumstances
• No previous disciplinary matters for either Respondent
• Second Respondent's peripheral involvement (three transactions)