A solicitor and the firm where he is a partner have been ordered to pay more than £16,000 in fines and costs for refusing to hand over documents needed as part of an investigation into a pension scam.
Anthony Wilson and Ashley Wilson Solicitors, the Knightsbridge firm where he is managing partner, pleaded guilty to refusing to provide documents without reasonable excuse at Brighton Magistrates’ Court this week.
District Judge Christopher James ordered Wilson to pay a £4,000 fine plus £7,500 costs. Ashley Wilson Solicitors was ordered to pay a £2,700 fine and £2,500 costs.
According to The Pensions Regulator, which brought the case, it is the first criminal conviction it has secured.
Wilson failed to provide the required documents despite requests for almost nine months.
The documents related to a property linked to an individual who was involved in a pension scam investigation.
Neither Wilson nor the firm was connected with the investigation and there was no suggestion that their staff had done anything wrong in their dealings with the property, TPR said.
Despite TPR making numerous requests for the information, it was only when it obtained a search warrant of the firm’s offices in March last year that the documents were secured.
Judge James said that information notices were an important enforcement tool for TPR that had been used appropriately.
Nicola Parish, executive director of frontline litigation at TPR, said: ‘Our staff received a series of woeful excuses rather than the information they had requested. This was a case of the company refusing to comply with the law. Legal action could have been avoided if Wilson or someone else at the firm had simply handed over the documents, as they should have done, because the information had already been retrieved from storage.’
Ashley Wilson Solicitors has been contacted for comment.
London firm and partner fined £16,000 after pensions battle
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