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Orb Solicitor Nicolas Greenstone (Fladgate Fielder) reprimanded by the Solicitors' Regulation Authority
Nicolas Greestone (formerly a partner of the London solicitors Fladgate Fielder, and more recently a corporate finance adviser at Merchant Capital) was legal adviser to the directors of Quays Group and to the Orb Group of companies, which collapsed into insolvency in late 2002. In August 2002, the sum of £27m was stolen from the quoted company Izodia by persons associated with Orb.The Serious Fraud Office brought criminal proceedings, which resulted in the jailing of Orb shadow director Gerald Smith for 8 years for theft and false accounting. Concurrently with this, Izodia plc brought a case against the Royal Bank of Scotland International in the courts of Jersey, alleging that the bank had transferred Izodia’s funds to the Orb Group without proper authority.
The judgment of the Royal Court of Jersey in favour of Izodia criticised the conduct of Mr Greenstone, as follows:
- Mr Greenstone appears to have certified as a true record the minutes of a company meeting of Izodia
purporting to act as its company secretary when he was not, in fact, its company secretary; and
- the persons stated to be directors of Izodia in the minutes certified by Mr Greenstone
were not, in fact, directors of the company; and
- the meeting for which Mr Greenstone certified minutes as a true record had never taken place at all.
In the light of these criticisms by a foreign court, I made a complaint to the Law Society concerning Mr Greenstone.
The Solicitors' Regulatory Authority reprimanded Mr Greenstone for his professional misconduct. Details of reprimand
I felt that the investigation of the Solicitors' Regulation Authority had been unsatisfactory and biased in a number of respects, and that the sanction of a reprimand for professional misconduct was unduly lenient. I therefore made a further complaint to the Legal Services Ombudsman.
The Ombudsman stated that there were no exceptional circumstances which allowed her to re-open the original complaint, but recommended that the Solicitors' Regulation Authority pay me compensation for its handling of my complaint. Ombudsman's Report