FORMER LAWYER SENTENCED FOR FRAUDULENTLY OBTAINING PUBLIC FUNDING TO MAKE IRAQ WAR CLAIMS AGAINST BRITISH SOLDIERS

A former prominent human rights solicitor has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years at Southwark Crown Court in a case prosecuted by John Ojakovoh as Leading Counsel. In this complex and sensitive historic case arising from the Iraq War, the defendant had earlier admitted, during his trial, that he fraudulently obtained Legal Aid funding, later used to bring very serious allegations, subsequently found by an Independent Inquiry to be without foundation, against British soldiers. The defendant, described in sentencing as ‘thoroughly dishonest’, had failed to disclose, when applying for Legal Aid in 2007, that he had broken fundamental rules of his firm’s Legal Aid Contract and his Professional Code, by enlisting an Iraqi middleman to obtain clients by cold calling in Southern Iraq and paying him cash for each client he referred. Confiscation proceedings will follow.

John Ojakovoh was instructed as Leading Counsel for the prosecution by the CPS’s Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate (SEOCID) and the case was investigated by the National Crime Agency.

Media: BBC, Sky News, The Daily Mail