Solicitor accused of taking money barred from office

THE LAW Society has secured further orders against a Co Cork solicitor who is alleged to have withdrawn large sums of money from his firm’s client account for his own benefit.

Earlier this month, the court made an order freezing the assets of and suspending the practising certificate of Alexander Gibbons, who practices as Gibbons Co Solicitor, Riverside, Kent Street, Clonakilty, Co Cork. The court heard there was a €430,000 deficit in his client account.

The Law Society said it was seeking those orders after forming the view that Mr Gibbons, principal of the firm and working as a solicitor since 1989, had been “guilty of dishonesty”. An accountant with the Law Society who investigated the solicitor’s accounts found payments from the client account were made to parties including an employee of Mr Gibbons and Bandon Grammar School, while one related to Mr Gibbon’s marina boat charge, the court heard.

Yesterday, Patrick Leonard, for the Law Society, said he was making an “unusual” ex parte (one side only represented) further application in circumstances where Mr Gibbons was represented by a solicitor and arising from the Law Society’s concerns about matters.

The organisation was concerned with two serious matters which had occurred since the court orders were made, counsel said. It had been informed by Permanent TSB that Mr Gibbons had sought to have his name taken off a bank mandate in an apparent attempt to evade the accounts freezing order, he said.

Permanent TSB had said Mr Gibbons was listed as a director of a company, and that company’s account held €200 when the freezing order was made. Since the freezing order, €27,500 had come into that account on June 20th last, and Mr Gibbons had been in contact with the PTSB branch saying he wanted to resign as a director of the company and have his name taken off the bank mandate.

The Law Society said it was not aware of the source of those funds and was concerned this was an attempt to circumvent the freezing order. This was “very serious” and it was hard to believe a solicitor would do such a thing, counsel said.

A second matter was that Mr Gibbons appeared to have gone into his office since the order was made and to have taken files, counsel said. While Mr Gibbons was claiming a right to maintain contact with his office and had said he attended there to prepare for these proceedings, the Law Society believed another person should be present when he did so.

Arising from those matters, the organisation was seeking interim orders restraining Mr Gibbons attending at his office and from continuing to hold files.

Mr Justice Garret Sheehan said he would make an order prohibiting Mr Gibbons attending at the office of the practice unless specifically required to do so by the society. The judge also directed that Mr Gibbons’s solicitor be immediately informed of the making of that order, and returned the matter to Monday.