Fined solicitor had “implacable belief” in his AML knowledge reports Legal Futures..
An experienced solicitor who had an “implacable belief that he was right” and so did not think he needed to check anti-money laundering (AML) rules has been fined £45,000 for breaching them.
Peter Kenneth Felton Gerber, 64, “simply believed that [the rules] did not apply to him, and he adopted a cavalier approach to them”, the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) found.
“To believe that experience alone is an ample substitute for formal training was misguided,” it went on.
This all manifested itself, among other failures, in him falsely telling prospective professional indemnity insurers in 2021 that all current and former staff over the previous six years had received formal anti-money laundering training.
Mr Gerber, who qualified in 1991, ran Kent firm Feltons Law. He made his staff redundant in August 2020, leaving him as a sole practitioner.
The SDT also found that, between 2017 and 2022, he did not have in place a firm-wide risk assessment (FWRA) – despite having told the Solicitors Regulation Authority in 20202 that he did – customer due diligence measures or AML policies, controls and procedures.
Further, he allowed the firm’s client account to be used as a banking facility for a month in 2020, with £4.4m passing through it, while he held residual client balances totalling nearly £34,000 on two matters that sat there for over two years.
The SDT said that “broadly speaking” Mr Gerber admitted the factual context of all the allegations but not that his conduct lacked integrity, was dishonest or reckless.
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Fined solicitor had “implacable belief” in his AML knowledge
