Thieving Lawyer Struck Off

Mpho Mokwape | Monday February 8, 2016 16:06

 

On Thursday, the bench led by Ian Kirby said Mutoriti should be removed from the roll as it was a clear case of theft by an attorney. “It was theft by an attorney of a large sum of money held by him in trust on behalf of his client.  The proper sanction was one of striking him from the roll, and this was by no means ‘wildly disproportionate’ as argued by Mutoriti,” Kirby said.

The matter came before the CoA by the Law Society of Botswana (LSB), following a successful legal battle by Mutoriti at the High Court.  In 2012, Justice Michael Mothobi of the High Court denied LSB the right to strike Mutoriti off the roll of practitioners.

It arose from the matter that Mutoriti was in 2012 accused of using P210,000 deposited into his trust fund account by his client to pay for a house he was purchasing.  According to court papers he had failed to pay back all the money and had lied through a bank transfer slip that he had paid, which was later proven to be false.

During the judgement, Kirby said there were a number of features, which aggravated Mutoriti’s admitted misconduct.

“The respondent has never sought to explain or justify his theft of a client’s money, which was a very significant sum, nor has he been in any way apologetic for the misappropriation. He also compounded his dishonesty in buying time by falsely informing on the bank slip,” he said.

Kirby further said Mutoriti had also failed to honour his initial promise to repayment, although he did eventually repay of the money when faced with criminal charge.

Mutoriti was admitted into practice in 1993.  On February 1999 he was removed from the roll after failing to renew his practising certificate following a damning audit report commissioned by LSB after receiving a string of complaints from the public. According to court documents, the audit could not be completed because he said he had lost certain receipt books and other documents in an office move, but was later restored to the roll in 2001 despite findings that his trust account was not properly kept.