€1m missing from solicitor client account

THE Law Society yesterday applied to the High Court for an order freezing the accounts of a solicitor because more than€1 million is allegedly missing from his client account.

The solicitor cannot be named but may be today, if he fails to come up with loan approval for funds to make up the deficit.

The court heard yesterday that while this was not a “Lynn/Byrne-type situation” — a reference to two other solicitors who owe tens of millions to financial institutions and are under Garda investigation — the sum of money is significant.

Paul Anthony McDermott BL, for the Law Society, asked High Court president Mr Justice Richard Johnson to conduct the proceedings in public because the Law Society was of the view that it “should not be done behind closed doors”.

The solicitor involved had been given a number of opportunities by the society’s practice regulation committee to “plug the hole” in the account. There had been four meetings between the solicitor’s representative and the committee since early March, but the deficit had still not been dealt with and it appeared the hole was not going to be plugged.

The solicitor’s own lawyer, Sean Sexton, told the court the practice is surviving on one very singular large transaction which is the subject of these proceedings. Mr Sexton disagreed that the “hole” could not be plugged and said the solicitor had already obtained approval for one loan of €600,000 and expected approval later yesterday for a further €1 million loan.

“I believe if it is heard in public today, that it will frustrate the efforts of my clients’ advisers in plugging the hole,” he said.

Mr Justice Johnson said he was prepared to hear the proceedings on an “in camera” basis with liberty to publish them if matters were not executed by the end of the day. The judge said, if the second loan being organised by the solicitor was not signed up to by the end of the day, the proceedings could be published.

The judge added that “apart from anything else there is a lot of public disquiet” which needed to be “shored up” for both the sake of the society and the legal profession itself.