Babatunde Adegboyega Taiwo

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

Babatunde Adegboyega Taiwo, a non-practising solicitor employed as an Area Manager at Transport for London, was found to have presented an altered 'Dependant' travel card (mistakenly issued in his name) and a 'Staff' leisure travel card to ticket inspectors on 26 and 27 January 2016 while commuting, attempting to mislead them that his tickets were valid, and to have caused or allowed his season ticket's expiry date to be altered from 16 June 2015 to 16 June 2016. The Tribunal found breaches of Principles 2 and 6 and made an express finding of dishonesty (applying the Ivey test) in respect of allegations 1.1 and 1.2, all of which were admitted. Absent exceptional circumstances, the Respondent was struck off the Roll and ordered to pay costs of £4,400 (reduced from £8,465 claimed).

Duties found breached:

• Integrity
• No conflict between current clients

Aggravating factors:

• Finding of dishonesty
• Actions constituted a criminal offence albeit not charged
• Repeated misconduct on more than one occasion
• Concealed wrongdoing and attempted to shift blame onto train staff
• Abused trust of his employer
• Motive appeared to be personal financial gain
• Planned conduct

Mitigating factors:

• Displayed some insight, realising he brought himself to the Tribunal by his own actions
• Made admission to the Applicant that he was not contesting the allegations
• Co-operated with the investigation
• Was not practising as a solicitor at the material time
• Previously good/exemplary conduct over 24 years