TWO crooked ex-lawyers from Inverclyde are today behind bars facing the prospect of lengthy prison sentences after being convicted of money laundering.
Ian Robertson, 69, and David Lyons, 71, both of Kilmacolm, have been remanded in custody by a judge awaiting their fate after they were found guilty following a lengthy trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
The pair acted along with three other men in offences which included hacking the bank account of a football club owner. A judge heard how the unnamed multi-millionaire had almost £1m taken from his account.
The court was told that almost £1.5m of dirty money was channelled through Robertson’s law firm, based in Paisley.
All five men had denied the charges against them but were found guilty. The criminal proceedings were launched after a Law Society of Scotland probe began into the Robertson & Ross legal firm.
The case centred on four separate transactions, with the largest involving the football team owner. A judge heard how £985,000 of the businessman’s money ended up in a client account of Robertson’s firm.
The businessman gave no authorisation for the transfer and he only became aware of it when he was contacted by his bank’s fraud team. Other deals involved a £79,340 cheque due to be paid to a law firm in Jersey plus fraudulent property transactions.
Prosecutor Alan Cameron told the court: “Robertson’s part in this was plain.
“He had access to the client account.”
Robertson, 69, and Lyons, 71, as well as Mohammed Aziz, 61, of Glasgow, were convicted of a charge of being involved in serious organised crime.
The three men, along with Alistair Blackwood, 68, of East Ayrshire, and 67-year-old Robert Ferguson, of Thornliebank, were also found guilty of charges under the Proceeds of Crime Act, committed between 2015 and 2016.
Corrupt Lyons, above left, had previously been struck off as a solicitor in 2015, over a separate matter relating to his former practice Lyons Laing in Greenock’s George Square.
The Scottish Solicitors Discipline Tribunal found back then that he had embezzled more than £1m from a bank and said he also ‘misappropriated funds from executry accounts’, had breached accounts rules and was ‘guilty of a serious catalogue of offending’.
He had secured a loan of £1.04 million from the Bank of Ireland in April 2005 in order to re-finance credit facilities provided by another lender and to pay for ‘additional investment’ – but kept huge chunks of the money for himself.
Lyons, Robertson and the other three men will be sentenced in the new year over the High Court case.
David Gordon, convener of the Law Society of Scotland regulatory committee, told the Telegraph: “In this case the Law Society acted to protect clients when serious issues were identified at law firm Roberton & Ross as part of a routine inspection.
“The Society suspended two solicitors [Robertson and Blackwood] at the firm from practice and successfully petitioned the Court of Session to appoint a judicial factor to protect the firm’s clients and the public interest.
“The Law Society has robust anti-money laundering measures in place to protect consumers and ensure the legitimate services provided by legal practices are not misused for criminal purposes.
“This outcome in court highlights the importance of taking swift action and ensuring that concerns were reported to the authorities.”