The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has asked a number of law firms to carry out a review of whether they are linked to the law firm at the centre of the Panama Papers data leak,
The Lawyer can reveal.
Firms that have received the SRA letter are understood to include Simmons & Simmons, Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW) and London firm Child & Child.
News of the SRA letter to firms follows an announcement on Thursday (7 April) that the UK’s financial regulator had written to banks and other financial companies to ask them to carry out a similar urgent review of their connections to Mossack Fonseca.
The SRA is understood to be working with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and a number of other regulatory bodies on this issue.
The lawyers’ watchdog has demanded the firms in question detail what action they are taking in the wake of the document release that exposed a web of secret offshore businesses allegedly used to diminish tax burdens and hide wealth.
A statement from the SRA read: “We are writing to those firms identified in the media as being linked to the Panama papers to ask for assurances that they have looked into the matter and have acted appropriately.
“We are also liaising with other authorities with an interest.”
The SRA’s letter to law firms follows a story in
The Lawyer last week that
revealed a number of City and international firms had been named in documents revealed as part of the leak.
Simmons & Simmons was named in an internal Mossack Fonseca document from 2006, which shows the firm acted as legal advisers to investment fund Blairmore Holdings, which was set up and co-run by Ian Cameron, the late father of British Prime Minister David Cameron.
Meanwhile HFW was named as an adviser to UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, one of the world’s wealthiest men. The firm is understood to have advised the political figure on his dealings in the UK, which include his management of commercial and residential properties in London worth more than £1bn.
London firm Pettman Smith, which merged with Child & Child in 2007, has also been linked through the leak to Al Nahyan.
In a 1999 document sent by Pettman Smith lawyer Ann Glaves-Smith, now a consultant at Trowers & Hamlins, to Mossack Fonseca’s British Virgin Islands (BVI) office, Al Nahyan is revealed as the sole signatory on the bank accounts of seven British-based property companies.
Child & Child has since been linked to the family of the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. The president’s daughters are shareholders in Exaltation Limited, which was set up in the BVI to manage a multimillion-pound property portfolio. The London firm wrongly claimed in the documents the two women had no political connections.
Trethowans is also named among the leaked documents as adviser to Baroness Pamela Sharples, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. The documents show Sharples is a major shareholder of Bahamas-headquartered Nunswell Investments alongside her son.
The documents reveal Sharples managed her company and communicated with Mossack Fonseca through a number of directors including Taylor Wessing private client and capital tax planning partner Andrew Hine.
Simmons & Simmons, HFW and Child & Child have been contacted for comment.
