Singapore Lawyer Found Guilty Of Misconduct After Helping Himself To $'s On Apartment Sale
Here's the report from Singapore's Today newspaper
http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC120110-0000063/Lawyer-guilty-of-professional-misconduct
SINGAPORE - A lawyer faces disciplinary action after his lapses in handling a "vulnerable" client's flat sale enabled the latter's brother to misappropriate more than S$220,000 from the proceeds.
Mr K Jayakumar Naidu could be suspended for up to five years, censured or made to pay a maximum penalty of S$100,000 after a disciplinary tribunal found him guilty of four of five professional misconduct charges relating to how he acted for Mr Hay Choo Soon in the sale of his Telok Blangah flat between November 2009 and March last year, according to its judgment released yesterday.
The tribunal found that Mr Jayakumar failed to fulfil his professional obligations by protecting his "vulnerable" client - one who is uneducated, has limited understanding of the English language, is "incapable of managing his own affairs", and clearly did not understand the nature and purpose of various legal documents he had signed.
The lawyer, who was called to the Bar in 2002, had carried out the instructions from Boo Seng, Mr Hay's younger brother, without verifying certain details with his client. For example, Mr Jayakumar had prepared legal documents allowing part of the sale proceeds to be paid to another man as repayment for a loan to Boo Seng, purportedly to repay his client's medical bills first.
Even when the lawyer found out that the medical bills were much lower than the loan amount, he took no steps to verify with his client.
When Mr Hay's older brother got wind of the situation and engaged another law firm to ask Mr Jayakumar to hold on to the sale proceeds, the lawyer also ignored the warning and continued carrying out Boo Seng's instructions.
This resulted in Boo Seng getting away with S$223,000 from the sale proceeds. Boo Seng has gone missing.
Mr Jayakumar's lawyers argued that "at worst, the respondent's actions might have been careless or reckless, but not grossly negligent".
They said the lapses were on account of the fact that Mr Jayakumar was "a man who is weighed down with the practices of a one-man show and who wishes to get things moving and not paying attention at times to details". While the tribunal agreed there was nothing to suggest Mr Jayakumar had known of or was aiding in the fraud, it found that there was sufficiently grave misconduct to warrant disciplinary action. TEO XUANWEI
