SRA investigates Giambrone Law partners over advice on Italian property deals
A trio of partners from Italian firm Giambrone Law, which is acting for a number of individuals affected by the Costa Concordia ferry disaster, is under investigation by the SRA.
Gabriele Giambrone
The solicitors watchdog is gearing up to bring disciplinary proceedings against the firm’s named partner Gabriele Giambrone alongside partners Alessandra Bellanca and Cinzia D’Arpa over deals done on behalf of clients based in England who bought properties in the south of Italy.
Complaints were first made to the SRA in April 2008 and after a four-year investigation it has instructed Farrer Buildings’ Geoffrey Williams QC to advise it on a disciplinary hearing.
Giambrone, however, said that the SRA needs to put its own house in order and scrutinise how it regulates non-UK lawyers.
“Client account rules are a UK thing,” he said, adding that non-UK lawyers practising in the UK needed only to pass two tests in order to start practising in England and Wales.
“We admit we didn’t fully know the SRA rules, but they should take responsibility for how European lawyers are regulated in the UK,” Giambrone continued. “This involves the whole legal profession. If we were based in Italy doing the same thing there would not be regulatory matters.”
The SRA alleges there have been six breaches of its code by the firm. They are listed as: failure to cooperate with the SRA; failure to adequately supervise an office; failure to maintain properly written up books of account; taking money out of client account otherwise than in accordance with the rules; failure to promptly remedy breaches of the accounts rules; and the wrongful transference of files out of the jurisdiction.
The firm still has an office operating in London and a further four offices across Italy plus a base in New York. Last week it announced that it would be representing victims who were affected by the grounding of cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Italian coast earlier this month (24 November 2011).
In November the SRA launched a consultation on how to regulate international practices under the new outcomes-focused regulatory regime.
Giambrone has instructed 4 New Square silk Simon Monty QC via Reynolds Porter Chamberlain partner Will Sefton.
Readers' comments (5)
Anonymous | 30-Jan-2012 9:49 pm
Having experience of this firm and Italian lawyers I believe the SRA and the UK have no powers over lawyers from overseas and they can pretty much do what they want. UK solicitors have to pay fees and go through so many hoops to satisfy SRA rules it is simply unfair the difference the way non-uk lawyers are exempt.
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Anonymous | 31-Jan-2012 10:52 pm
As an ex-client of the defunct Giambrone Law LLP (which was finally wound up by HMRC) I agree with the above comment.
There is no control of overseas firms who can operate in the UK with absolutely no oversight.
It is totally unfair to properly regulated UK legal firms.
Law firms should be treated like Financial Services firms. i.e. it should be illegal for non-UK firms to market in the UK unless they have passed the proper UK exams.
In Italy there was a well known route to "qualification" where student Lawyers could pass exams by paying to sit in an "examination" where the examiner dictated the full answers to budding candidates. It is of liitle suprise that some of these "Lawyers" are not up to the same standards of UK trained Lawyers.
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Anonymous | 5-Feb-2012 3:00 pm
This man and his firm still owe me money and trying to get it back seems impossible. Surely the European Union counts for something. How can a citizen of a member state, behave in such a way, that another member state citizen can be"robbed" of their life savings and then simply hide behind the laws of their so called primary residency. Surely robbery is robbery in any language. When are we, in the Uk going to start playing the same game other memeber states play and get a way with it. I agree with the previous 2 posts and either lets start playing by their rules or do something about our own, otherwise people like Gabriele Giambrone will do it all over agin once the good times come round again.
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Anonymous | 2-May-2012 10:00 am
I needed advice on how to do an Italian will, so my friend recommended giambrone law. I gave them a call and spoke to a lovely lady called carol, she was very helpful.
so i decided to instruct giambrone law and the process was very quick, i had my italian will done within 2 weeks.
I recommend them as i found them very helpful and the process was very quick.
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Anonymous | 4-Nov-2012 9:44 pm
can anyone here give an opinion of how efficient this law firm is in dealing with the Finanzas Forex Scam in Panama. I keep emailing them and there is no reply. No news at all since they offered to act in a group case.
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