A solicitor has escaped imprisonment after being convicted of tipping off a client about a Serious Fraud Office investigation.
William Osmond, 69, co-founder of London firm Osmond & Osmond Solicitors, spoke only to confirm his name before he was sentenced at the Old Bailey for disclosing confidential details about an investigation to his client and one charge of forgery in a bid to mislead SFO investigators.
Osmond was sentenced to a total of nine months imprisonment – six months imprisonment for the tipping off conviction and three months imprisonment for the forgery count to run consecutively – suspended for 18 months.
He must also comply with a community order of 100 hours of unpaid work and pay a contribution of £5,000 towards the SFO’s costs.
The sentence follows a five-day trial earlier this month where Osmond was convicted under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2022 by a 10 to 2 majority and unanimously convicted on the forgery charge.
The SFO said the case was the first prosecution of its kind. In 2018, investigators made covert enquiries about James Redding Ramsay, one of Osmond’s clients, who had paid £4m toward the purchase of a property in Mayfair, London.
The court heard that the SFO’s call to Osmond was in relation to the source of the money as part of a wider investigations into the Eurasian National Resources Corporation (ENRC) and the solicitor was warned three times by the SFO investigator not to tell his client.
Osmond, who was acting money laundering reporting officer for the firm, contacted his client about the money laundering investigation and met with Ramsay multiple times over five months to discuss the matter. He flew to Ramsay’s home in Malta and met him at a private dining club in west London.
Osmond also supplied the SFO with a fake letter of engagement that set out his role as solicitor for a British Virgin Islands company which was purchased by Ramsay and used to move funds for the purchase of the London property.
SFO investigators searched Osmond’s office in 2019 and found five pages of handwritten notes on his discussions with Ramsay, as well as computer files that showed his forgery.
Her Honour Judge Trowler KC said: ‘As a result the Serious Fraud Office were no longer able to conduct their investigation into the [property] transaction without Mr Ramsay’s knowledge. In that way the investigation was prejudiced in the sense its integrity was undermined.’
However she added that the ‘prosecution cannot point to any serious harm which actually occured in this case’.
The judge told Osmond he ‘provided that false document in the court of a criminal investigation and as a lawyer you would know to act as you did was a criminal offence and wholly out of keeping with the standard of behaviour to be expected from a solicitor.’
Sentencing Osmond, the judge said: ‘I took into account of the fact that consequences of your convictions include that you will almost inevitably be prevented from practising in the future even if you wish to do so. I note you have tendered your resignation.’
Suspending Osmond’s sentence, the judge acknowledged the ‘impact of prisoners of the current very high prison population’.
