Natasha Wong QC leading Merry Van Woodenberg of 2 Hare Court acted for a Compliance Manager acquitted of conspiring to defraud the Legal Aid Agency and perverting the course of justice. The defendant was the Compliance Manager of a London firm of immigration solicitors who was alleged to have played a central role in a scheme to create and submit fraudulent claims to the Legal Aid Agency ( LAA, previously the Legal Services Commission) over a 6 year period. The Compliance Manager , a former employee of the LAA, was also said to have been instrumental in misleading them through correspondence and telephone calls during the course of the investigation. The Crown had alleged the firm made over 4000 fraudulent claims on behalf of bogus clients, creating convincing forgeries of documents belonging to genuine clients in support of purported genuine applications to the Home Office . This scheme comprised 40% of the firm’s income from the Legal Aid Agency over that period. The Crown’s had estimated the total value of the fraud at about £4 million.The client was acquitted by the jury in under an hour of deliberations.
The principals of the firm were convicted of the conspiracy last year.
Instructed by Graeme Hydari of Hodge Jones and Allen.
