A Burges Salmon associate has been struck off for mishandling the estates of dead clients.

'Basil's'* carefree approach to the deceased was revealed by the SRA last week when he appeared before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. In one impressive bungle cited at his hearing, Basil was told to sell off shares belonging to one of the firm's expired clients. For some reason he didn't, but when he was pressed by the executor he lied that he had, and then took the money from another client account to pay the beneficiaries.

When Basil did finally get around to selling the shares he discovered that they had shot up in value, and found himself with more money than he had paid out. After replacing the money in the client account he had raided, Basil set up a third account in which to hide the excess funds.
 

  Basil taking instructions on when to sell


Legal Business reports that Basil's misadventures with the riches of the dead, which carried on for a decade between 2002 and 2012, involved tens of thousands of pounds. However Burges Salmon, which called the situation "deeply regrettable", told RollOnFriday it had to find "less than £10,000" to make good client funds, so possibly Basil's facility with the stock market helped out in the end.

Bail admitted using funds improperly, making untrue statements and dishonesty, and was struck off and ordered to pay £16,000 costs. SRA Director of Legal Enforcement Gordon Ramsay said the ex-Burges Salmon lawyer "was robbing Peter to pay Paul", although he was actually just borrowing from Peter to pay dead Paul's relatives while praying for BP's share price to stabilise.

*Note: RollOnFriday anonymised the culprit in 2021, as he's definitely done his time in the limelight.

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Comments

Anonymous 26 September 14 11:45

Re: anonymour use 09.50 - my thoughts exactly. Doesn't say much for Burges Salmon's internal systems or approach to supervision...

Anonymous 26 September 14 12:05

I find this article distasteful - this is a young man who has made mistakes and now had to pay for it. Talk about knitting aroud the guillotine

Anonymous 26 September 14 12:35

Distasteful? This wasn't a one off - he admitted 4 counts of dishonesty. The profession depends on integrity and this guy showed none.

Anonymous 26 September 14 12:37

I quite agree with 11.05. We come here for scandal and gossip. But only tasteful scandal and gossip.

Anonymous 28 September 14 15:45

I knew [Basil] from my days at BS. Very sad to see this has happened - correct of course that he must be struck off but am sad he got himself into this position - one lie leading to bigger ones.

Anonymous 29 September 14 10:55

Although striking off was the only option here, the write-up is unfair. The insinuation is that this lad profited or sought to profit from what he did, which is particularly ghoulish in the case of deceased estates. But that isn't what happened - he attempted to cover up poor admin with lies - not acceptable, but not grave robbing.

I know ROF is about legal tittle-tattle, but do remember these things hang around on the internet and may be misunderstood by a future employer (outside the legal sphere) doing an idle Google search.