Radio NZ
Lawyer Aaron Nicholls can tell you exactly what he didn’t spend over $700,000 of his client’s money on: Drugs, boats or gambling.
What he can’t say for certain is exactly where it went.
Nicholls was suspended from practice this year after several clients raised concerns about their money, which was held in a trust account by Nicholls’ firm, and while the Law Society tried to figure out where the money had gone.
Nicholls doesn’t dispute there’s a hole of nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in his ledgers, but he told the Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal this week that he didn’t pocket the money.
“It may seem irrelevant, but I don’t think any of the material contains evidence that I pocketed money,” Nicholls told the tribunal.
“It’s not the case that I have used or stashed away money taken from the trust account.”
“I was benefited by continuing to be able to practise,” Nicholls said.
“If you think I took the money to a casino, I didn’t.
“I have not taken money and bought a boat, or drugs, or gambled or whatever.”
The deputy chair of the tribunal, Dr John Adams, described Nicholl’s submissions as “nonsense”.
“It doesn’t make sense in what we would call the real world,” Adams said.
“There was money in your trust account, it was taken by your action, and has never been seen since.”
Nicholls said the Law Society had locked him out of the trust account so he couldn’t say exactly how he’d kept his practice afloat or how he’d used his client’s funds, but accepted he’d be struck off for it.
