A Cavan solicitor has been suspended after the High Court found he was "dishonest" in his handling of clients' monies. Ronan O'Brien of Ronan O'Brien & Co. Solicitors of Church Street, Cavan was suspended from the roll of solicitors during an emergency disciplinary hearing last week.
It follows a complaint to the Legal Services Regulatory Authority concerning Mr O’Brien’s handling of the nearly €300,000 in proceeds from the sale of a property in Virginia, Co Cavan. The law society said O'Brien appeared to practiced "teeming and lading" which is fraudulent bookkeeping.
Mark Tighe Senior News Journalist from the Sunday Independent has more: "Last Monday in the High Court, President of the High Court, Judge David Barneville, on an application from the Law Society suspended Ronan O'Brien from a practice under his name in Cavan Town," Mark explained, "He's now prohibited from acting as a solicitor or holding himse3lf out as a solicitor following the suspension and that followed an emergency disciplinary committee hearing by the Law Society after they received a report from one of their investigating accountants.
"The accountant had found there had been something called 'teeming and lading', a form of bookkeeping fraud. This arose after clients of Mr O'Brien, William and Lorraine Keogh, had complained about the handling of €300,000 from the proceeds of the sale of their house that hadn't been forwarded to them. The court found some of the money had been used to pay debts of another client of Mr O'Brien's.
"The emergency committee hearing in the Law Society had heard there had been a dishonest handling of those monies and this teeming and lading, this bookkeeping fraud, had occurred in how proceeds had been handled. The Law Society sought an application for all Mr O'Brien's client accounts, all his bank accounts to be handed over to the Law Society, all his files to be handed over to the Law Society and the President of the High Court so ordered that last Monday."
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