The Solicitors Regulation Authority has referred the first two solicitors for prosecution in connection with the Post Office scandal.
Jane McLeod was the Post Office’s General Counsel from 2015 to 2019 but she refused to appear before the the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry.
The SRA said that MacLeod “failed to co-operate fully” with the inquiry “in relation to a request for her to give oral evidence” in 2024.
McLeod had moved to Australia where she refused to appear even by video link.
When she was doorstepped by the BBC and asked about documents which showed that the Post Office had lied when it said in its defence that it was unaware of the software errors that led to the wrongful criminal convictions of sub postmasters, the former GC answered “no comment”.
Inquiry counsel Jason Beer KC told chair Sir Wyn Williams, “We are not going to hear from her. She lives abroad and won’t co-operate”.
(Roffers on the RollOnFriday discussion board called her a “scaredy cat” at the time and said they would have “made a holiday of it”.)
McLeod, who is no longer practising as a solicitor, did come out of hiding long enough to submit a witness statement.
Although she expressed regret, she denied being involved in a cover-up and said she had relied on external advice provided by Bond Dickinson (now Womble Bond Dickinson), which was also put under the spotlight, along with others in the legal profession.
The SRA has also referred Nick Gould for prosecution. Gould acted for Seema Misra, a victim of the Post Office Horizon scandal and threatened her with court action for not paying legal fees he claimed he was owed.
The SRA alleges that Gould failed to provide adequate information in respect of his costs, raised invoices without providing adequate justification of the amounts demanded, breached client confidentiality and sent correspondence to his client “which was inappropriate and/or offensive”.
Gould declined to comment.
The SRA has said that the allegations against the two solicitors “are subject to a Hearing before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal and are as yet unproven.”
Jonathan Peddie, the SRA’s pro-active Executive Director of Investigations, Enforcement and Litigation, said, “Our wider investigations are still ongoing. This includes issues relating directly to the Horizon scandal, where we are working closely with the Inquiry team and the Metropolitan Police. We can and will act if we find that solicitors we regulate fail to meet our standards”.
The SRA has previously said it is investigating over 20 firms and solicitors in relation to the scandal.
https://www.rollonfriday.com/news-content/sra-charges-two-solicitors-over-post-office-scandal
