Decision record
ANDREW JOHN FRASER
Allegation / charges
Struck Off the Roll of Practitioners
Findings — machine-extracted (anthropic-batch:claude-opus-4-8); verify against the decision
A legal practitioner was convicted in the County Court of Victoria on his guilty plea of being knowingly concerned in the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine, trafficking in cocaine, and possession of ecstasy, and was sentenced to 7 years imprisonment (5 year non-parole). The Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal found him guilty of illegal conduct and reported to the Full Court recommending he be struck off. The Full Court (Malcolm CJ, Murray and McKechnie JJ) held the conduct meant he was no longer a fit and proper person to remain in the profession and ordered his name struck from the roll, with no order as to costs by consent.
Duties found breached:
- Personal probity and fitness to practise
- Handle inadvertently received material
- AML and crime-prevention compliance
- Not misrepresent regulated status
Aggravating factors:
- Status as a solicitor placed him in a special relationship with the law, aggravating the offending
- Conduct intimately related to his legal practice - offered legal/quasi-legal advice to forward the importation
- Repeated and persistent trafficking over an extended period
- Commercial quantity of cocaine (3.7kg, valued $1.35m-$2.7m)
- Public scandal reflecting on the profession as a whole
Mitigating factors:
- Plea of guilty to the criminal charges
- Admitted the allegations before the Tribunal