Surprise surprise!
The UK Law Gazette
s much as £39.5m in client money could be missing from the collapsed PM Law group, the Solicitors Regulation Authority revealed today. In an update, the regulator reiterated that the collapse of the network is being treated as a suspected fraud. PM Law and its group of 11 companies, 25 offices and more than 30 trading names closed suddenly in February, with the SRA intervening two days later.
The amount of missing client money is second in scale only to the Axiom Ince group, where around £64m went missing, and will put enormous pressure on the compensation fund paid for by solicitors and firms.
As of the end of last week, the SRA had paid £9.3m in 92 claims from former clients of the Sheffield-based group and its array of firms. Hundreds of further claims are expected to be made by people trying to claim back their money and the burden on the compensation fund is predicted to be around £21.5m.
The SRA has paid out £6.8m from money held by the firm at the time of intervention.
A total of 25,000 emails or letters have been sent to people identified from the seized files as having live matters, and 17,000 enquiries from clients have been dealt with. The SRA has returned 9,300 live files to clients and a further 20,000 files in bulk to insurer clients.
Extra staff have had to be seconded into the compensation fund team and intervention agents are working evenings and weekends to handle client enquiries.
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