A solicitor has been sanctioned for professional misconduct after he gave immigration advice when acting for a fake law firm and without professional indemnity cover.
As well as being sanctioned, Festus Ibi, a native of Nigeria, has been told to pay €2,000 to each of four complainants and to contribute €2,000 towards the costs of each of the four complainants cases taken by the Legal Services Regulatory Authority (ie, a total of €16,000).
The Legal Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal also ruled he should attend an online course on ethics and professional conduct.
After he received a practising certificate from the Law Society in March 2019, Mr Ibi saw clients of a fake law firm, THL Legal, up to October of that year when its offices in Rathcoole were raided by gardaí. He now works for the Legal Aid Board in Dublin.
The case against him was brought after five immigrant clients of the bogus firm complained they did not get the services for which they were charged.
The tribunal found Mr Ibi’s professional misconduct was in the low to middle range of seriousness. Aggravating factors were the vulnerability of the clients, the lack of insight into his conduct shown by Mr Ibi, and his attempts before the tribunal to blame others.
Mitigating factors included his co-operation with the authority, his personal circumstances, and his having no previous disciplinary issues.
Mr Ibi was not a driver behind what had happened and there was no evidence he profited from what occurred, said the chairman, Andrew Harvey.
The tribunal found Mr Ibi guilty of professional misconduct arising from his acting without professional indemnity cover and allowing his name to be used for the profit of one or more unqualified persons, in respect of each of four of the complainants. He was found not guilty of other counts.
Mr Ibi’s solicitor, John O’Dwyer, said his client “was taken on by THL because he happened to be a non-Irish person who was going to help other people from his country and elsewhere in Africa”.
In her submission on the appropriate sanction, Elaine Finneran, for the authority, said the complainants were immigrants seeking legal advice on how members of their family could come here or be allowed remain in the country.
“They were members of the public. They felt they were doing the right thing,” she said.
Mr O’Dwyer said his client was not from Ireland. It was “not his fault” nobody told him that THL Legal was not an authorised legal firm. There had been an “abject failure” on the part of the Law Society to avert all that had happened, he said.
His client, who accepted the findings of the tribunal, was a married man with children who lived in rented accommodation in Dublin and earned €1,750 per fortnight from the Legal Aid Board, he said.
“Are you going to crucify someone at the start of his career?” he said. “We must look after people who are vulnerable, which he is.”
THL Legal was owned by David Williams (68), of Sroughan, Blessington, Co Wicklow, who in November pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to multiple sample counts of deception between January 2019 and June 2020.
The court was told that gardaí who raided the THL offices found a client list with 1,200 names on it. Most of the people seeking advice were non-Irish and had paid an average of €1,500 to the bogus firm. Williams is currently awaiting sentence.
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