Ex-Fulbright partner admits stealing £100k from firm
Former Fulbright & Jaworski partner Richard Simkin and his office manager wife Zakia Sharif have pleaded guilty to stealing £100,000 from the firm.
The couple hid their relationship from the firm after Sharif was appointed to the £95,000-a-year office manager position in 2005 on Simkin’s recommendation, The Times reports.
The pair appeared at the Old Bailey earlier this week charged with false accounting and fraud.
Simkin had admitted his role in the theft, but Sharif initially denied the charges, changing her plea in all but two of the seven charges yesterday after being told she could face an 18-month prison term.
Sharif falsely claimed she had two law degrees from King’s College London to secure her job at Fulbright. After being dismissed from Fulbright in 2008 she took a position at Holman Fenwick Willan, earning a salary of £160,000 after again lying about her qualifications.
The court heard how the couple had spent money staying in luxury hotels in Mexico City and Hong Kong while falsifying expense invoices to show that the money had been spent on recruitment agencies.
Other claims included £2,400 for a signed photo of boxer Muhammed Ali, £920 for a Louis Vuitton key holder and £1,400 for Deschamps silk sheets.
The couple, who have a £1.5m home in Holland Park, both claimed legal aid for their defence costs but have been told they could face “substantial” fines, costs and compensation payments.
The pair will be sentenced in March.
Simkin, a former head of litigation at Reed Smith legacy firm Richards Butler, has been struck off the solicitor roll while Sharif has been barred from working as a legal executive.
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Readers' comments (24)
Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 2:16 pm
Well you have to feel sorry for them don't you? If I lost MY designer key holder I'd be tempted to resort to theft too.
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 2:18 pm
Formerly a senior partner and member of Richard Butler's (now Reed Smith) management board. Very sad.
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 2:20 pm
How on earth do these partners' expenses go unchecked for so long? Like Grierson at Hogan Lovells last year this is a theft which could have been avoided if only the firm had proper risk management systems in place. There needs to be spot checks on expenses surely? And what kind of background check were carried out by the firm when hiring this woman?
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 3:06 pm
I don't think it's necessarily down to risk management. If senior professionals and owners of the business are going to go to the lengths of actually forging documents, it's always going to be difficult to combat. It would be interesting to know how this did in fact come to light. What is more surprising, idiotic, even tragic is that people would risk - and in this case lose - everything for the sake of RELATIVELY trivial sums of money (probably only a couple of month's earnings for them).
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 3:34 pm
More interesting is the fact (as gleaned from the Evening Standard report yesterday of the hearing) that after being dismissed by Fulbright, Holman Fenwick & Willan appointed Sharif in a support role at the firm on £165,000 a year. That is probably more than many of HFW's salaried partners and you have to wonder how she could justify such a salary as an office manager in a non fee earning role.
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 3:41 pm
Fyi
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 3:58 pm
By my calculations, based on UK200, salaried partners earned an average £182k at HFW last financial year. they should've saved themselves the legal hassle and cashed in as an office manager on £160k
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 4:02 pm
English judges do not bang gavels - perhaps a legal publication might care to take note.
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 4:41 pm
ooooo, whose been watching QI?
I think the gavel is just a common symbol for the courts Mr Fry?
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Anonymous | 12-Jan-2012 4:42 pm
Yet more evidence of a morally bankrupt society in which Money Is All.
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