Matthew G J Roddan

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

Matthew Garnett John Roddan, a solicitor and partner/director at Eastleys/Recompense Ltd, faced eight allegations arising from an SRA investigation. He made false statements that his firm represented PCL, gave undertakings he had no authority to give to the R family and to investor CM, failed to carry out adequate due diligence and money laundering checks, ignored an SRA warning notice on fraudulent financial arrangements, used the client account as a banking facility (£796,157.81 received from the R family), failed to reconcile the dollar account, and failed to co-operate with the SRA by falsely claiming documents were not in his possession. The Tribunal found all allegations proved. It made express dishonesty findings regarding the false representations in letters to the R family and CM, taking unfair advantage of third parties, and lying to the regulator about missing documents, but did not find dishonesty proved regarding the incomplete due diligence checks or failure to heed the warning notice. Given the dishonesty and seriousness, and finding no exceptional circumstances, the Tribunal struck him off the Roll and ordered costs of £27,786. The Respondent did not attend; the hearing proceeded in his absence.

Duties found breached:

• No taking unfair advantage
• Uphold public trust in the profession
• No conflict between current clients
• No improper use of client money
• Accounting records, reconciliation and reports
• Cooperate openly with regulators
• Report serious misconduct of others

Aggravating factors:

• Dishonesty
• Made false and misleading statements to third parties and lied to regulator
• Repeated conduct
• Sought to conceal own wrongdoing knowing he was in material breach
• High level of culpability, operating at partner/director level with 18 years' experience
• Breach of trust of the R family and CM who relied on his status as a solicitor

Mitigating factors:

• No previous disciplinary matters
• Admissions made reflecting limited insight
• Did not set out to become dishonest; conduct was reactive rather than planned