A sorry tale
The UK Law Society Gazette
The High Court has overturned a Solicitors Regulation Authority intervention into an east London firm run by a solicitor with a 40-year unblemished record.
His Honour Judge Jarman KC, sitting as a judge of the High Court, said the reasons to suspect Martyn Santer was dishonest – the basis for shutting down his firm in July – were ‘significantly lessened’ based on the evidence presented.
It was accepted that Santer had been a victim of a disbarred barrister going under the name of Asad Sahi and posing as a registered foreign lawyer. Santer had been looking to retire from practice due to ill health and agreed in 2022 to sell his Barking firm to Sahi for £90,000. Sahi was in fact called Yawar Ali Shah, who had been jailed in 2013 for conspiracy to defraud a law firm and misappropriated almost £3m.
The court accepted that Santer carried out appropriate identity checks and was deceived by a driving licence presented to him, as had been the firm’s secretary and an SRA investigator when they probed the acquisition in 2023.
‘It is unlikely that a professional with an unblemished record of over 40 years, as Mr Santer was, would risk all by becoming complicit with a sophisticated fraudster in the closing months of the practice,’ said the judge.
The court heard that Sahi carried out work for the firm and there was now good reason to suspect that he and an associate acted dishonestly, included falsifying title documents and making false mortgage applications.
Santer’s key point was that rather than being complicit in this dishonest conduct, as the SRA alleged, he was as much taken in as anyone else. He submitted that he failed to spot the fraudulent conduct before it was too late.
The effect of the without notice intervention into his practice was that he was immediately suspended and another firm took over some 500 live files.
The judge said the intervention had done ‘sizeable damage’ to the practice and to Santer’s reputation, causing great stress. Some clients had been using the firm for years and were a third generation to have instructed it.
The judge did not accept the submission that there was no risk now that Sahi and his associates were no longer working in the practice. It was clear there had been failings by Santer in supervision and ensuring compliance, and a lack of insight into those failings.
The SRA had been critical of Santer continuing to engage with Sahi when he knew of his arrest and that he was an imposter. But the solicitor said he needed information from Sahi and needed to speak with him to ensure a smooth handover.
The judge added: ‘Although there is likely to be some risk to the public by withdrawal [of the intervention], such risk is likely to be relatively small now that Mr Santer has had the experience of investigation and intervention and now that Yawar Ali Shah and his associates no longer work in the practice.
‘Mr Santer is unlikely to put himself in this position again. The damage to him and the practice and potentially to clients by the notice continuing, although already suffered to a sizeable extent, is such as to outweigh that risk.’
