A barrister who worked part-time as an immigration tribunal judge has been jailed for three years for defrauding the Legal Aid Agency in a conspiracy which cost the taxpayer £1.8 million.
The sentencing of Rasib Ghaffar, 54, at Southwark Crown Court on Friday brought to an end a lengthy legal saga that dated back to 2015.
Ghaffar was the last of the defendants to be convicted in connection to a string of frauds in which solicitors, barristers, and judges agreed to cook the books and inflate their legal fees.
One of the ringleaders, legal clerk Gazi Khan, 55, was jailed for five years last year and his trial heard he had tried to perpetrate three frauds which would have cost the taxpayer a total of £12 million.
Ghaffar was convicted in relation to offences stemming from a trial at Bournemouth Crown Court in 2011 in which four defendants were acquitted.
The scammers tried to obtain a total of £1,856,584, but only succeeded in obtaining £469,477.
Judge Says Scam Was ‘Absolutely Outrageous’
After Ghaffar was convicted in February, Judge Philip Bartle, KC said it was an “absolutely outrageous” and “dishonest” attempt to cheat the public purse.Judge Bartle told Ghaffar, “This is as a result of greed for the sake of greed, forging documents and claiming vast sums of money for work that was not done.”
Ghaffar’s wife, solicitor Kareena Maciel, 52, was found unfit to stand trial.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published a statement, which said: “This prosecution follows a substantial police investigation into fraudulent claims for defendants’ costs orders [DCOs] submitted to the Legal Aid Agency national taxing team on behalf of acquitted defendants in criminal proceedings in crown courts.”
Defendants who pay their own legal costs often use DCOs to claim some of the money back from the taxpayer if they are acquitted.
The CPS said, “In this case, defendants instructed solicitors and counsel to represent them privately in criminal proceedings and, following their acquittals, successfully applied to the courts for DCOs.”
“These orders enabled their instructed solicitors to claim payments of their own costs and disbursements (which included counsel’s agreed fees) from central government funds,” the prosecutors added.
Two solicitors—Azhar Khan, 52, and Joseph Ameyaw-Kyeremeh, 73—were also convicted last year for their roles in the fraud.
Khan and Ameyaw-Kyeremeh were both handed suspended sentences of two years in prison.
Malcolm McHaffie, deputy crown prosecutor for the CPS Serious Economic, Organised Crime and International Directorate, said: “These convicted defendants defrauded the Legal Aid Agency for their own purposes.
“They fraudulently took advantage of a statutory scheme which was designed to help acquitted defendants with their genuinely incurred legal costs,” he added.
Mr. McHaffie said the CPS and the Metropolitan Police worked closely together to bring “these corrupt legal professionals to justice.”
The CPS is seeking to reclaim the missing money by way of confiscation proceedings.
Some of the defendants were originally charged as long ago as 2015 but a series of delays—including several hung juries and trials collapsing owing to outbreaks of COVID-19—held up the proceedings, which were subjected to reporting restrictions for some time.
Those restrictions were finally lifted in February this year following the conviction of the last defendant, Ghaffar.
Legal Aid Costs £1.8 Billion a Year
In February, the National Audit Office reported the annual spend on legal aid in England and Wales in 2022/23 was £1.8 billion.But it said there had been a £728 million “real-term reduction in legal aid spending” since 2012/13.
Earlier this year the government published plans to reform the legal aid means test, which has remained unchanged since 2009.
It said the reformed system would be in place by 2026.
“This means that each year fewer and fewer people are eligible to access legal aid, meaning justice for them is pushed out of reach,” it added.
