Petros Petrou & Stylianos Petrou

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

Two brothers, partners in Petrou Law Partnership. First Respondent (COFA) admitted lack of integrity, manifest incompetence and recklessness in overcharging two estates, improperly borrowing £100,000 from estate funds, making improper transfers, and causing a client account shortage of up to £489,649.57; dishonesty was alleged but withdrawn by the SRA on his agreement to be struck off and undertake never to seek readmission. He was struck off. Second Respondent (COLP) admitted only the client account shortage allegation (lack of integrity and manifest incompetence) arising from his culpable failure to supervise the accounts; remaining allegations, recklessness and dishonesty against him were withdrawn. He was suspended 12 months followed by an indefinite restriction order. No express finding of dishonesty against either. Each ordered to pay £20,000 costs (£40,000 total).

Duties found breached:

• Disclose material information to client
• Non-discriminatory acceptance and cab-rank
• No improper benefit, loan or bequest
• No improper use of client money
• Cooperate openly with regulators
• Good faith and courtesy to colleagues
• Not misrepresent regulated status

Aggravating factors:

• Recklessness admitted by First Respondent
• Misconduct repeated and continued over a significant period
• Abuse of position of trust as solicitor-executor and taking advantage of beneficiaries
• Planned improper borrowing from estate funds
• First Respondent had prior rebuke (Sept 2019) for Accounts Rules breaches
• Second Respondent had prior finding: £50,000 fine (Sept 2019) for misuse of client damages
• Second Respondent benefitted financially from excessive billing as co-owner

Mitigating factors:

• Remorse and full/frank admissions demonstrating insight
• Minimum client account shortage replaced
• Cooperation with the SRA investigation
• First Respondent previously unblemished career
• Second Respondent genuinely (though culpably) ignorant of First Respondent's conduct
• Second Respondent incurred personal liability of nearly £250,000 to remedy the shortfall
• No client suffered actual financial loss

⚠ figures not found verbatim in the source were dropped: ["review_dishonesty_finding_cue_present"]