Law Soc Gazette
A solicitor who failed to carry out money-laundering checks on £8.8 million has been struck off for ‘widespread and fundamental non-compliance’ with AML rules.
William Joseph Harris, admitted in April 1980, operated as a sole practitioner and worked mostly in residential conveyancing, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal heard.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority had been raising concerns across the profession about firm-wide risk assessments (FWRA). Harris responded in December 2019 to a notice asking whether his firm had one in place, to which he incorrectly said he did.
However during a 2023 interview with an SRA investigator – after the true position had come to light – Harris admitted he had not had, and still did not have, a FWRA in place.
When the SRA began investigating Harris’s firm, he had provided a forensic investigator with what he purported to be a FWRA, but in interview he accepted it was not an FWRA and it had been ‘located from the HMRC website’ and that he did not actually know what an FWRA was.
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