Jail for the bent barrister

A shamed barrister ignored a ban and advised immigrants when he was not qualified has been jailed for 22 months.

Michael Wainwright, 33, advised eight refugees over a period of three-and-a-half-years, through his firm Crested Associates.

Many of his clients were in detention at the time and desperate to resolve their immigration status, Southwark Crown Court heard.

Wainwright was struck off in July 2015 after a tribunal found his dishonest dealings with a client resulted in his mother-in-law being deported to China.

The barrister had lied about submitting an application for discretionary leave to remain to the UK Border Agency – assuring the client it would arrive before the end of 2011.

But it was not submitted until the following March – after the date by which the UKBA’a decision to refuse it could be appealed.

Wainwright was also found to have worked with the same client as a public access barrister despite not completing the appropriate training and registering as a public access practitioner.

He was also previously suspended for 28 days in March 2013 after a previous hearing found he had misled an immigration tribunal.

Wainwright admitted eight counts of providing immigration services when not qualified to do so between May 2013 and September last year.

Prosecutor Alastair Richardson said: ‘He was never, whilst a barrister, qualified to handle work on a direct access basis.

‘In summary, the prosecution case is that between May 2013 and September 2016 Mr Wainwright was providing immigration advice and services on a large scale, a commercial basis, for his own profit, charging fees.

‘He was providing those services to vulnerable people often held in detention centres.’

Philip McGhee, defending, accepted Wainwright was ‘acting for people in detention’ and ‘taking money from them all, pretty much.’

But he added: ‘Lest it be thought that Mr Wainwright, as a result of this, was living in the lap of luxury – he was not.’

Mr McGhee denied that Wainwright had ‘stuck two fingers up at the court’ by ignoring his suspension and disbarment.

‘It is plain, in my submission, that he failed to cope with the demands of the job of a barrister,’ he said.

Wainwright wanted to be a barrister ‘from a very young age, doing what he thought was helping these people.

‘The effect of his trying to help was that he fundamentally mishandled the cases he got involved in and never should have got involved with them in the first place,’ he said.

Judge Christopher Hehir slammed Wainwright’s ‘flagrant disregard’ for the standards of the profession and the orders of the courts and the Bar Disciplinary Tribunal.

‘You persistently and in a very sophisticated fashion held yourself out to vulnerable and often desperate people as somebody who could help them with their immigration issues,’ he said.

‘The prohibition on immigration services is there for good reason.

‘Whether or not those who seek help with immigration issues have a good case or are entitled to be in this country or remain in this country is neither here nor there.

‘The simple truth is that they and their families are in difficult and quite often bewildering situations with everything at stake.

‘Charlatans like you take advantage of their difficulties and desperation and, by doing so, you could only harm their interests.’

The judge said although Wainwright ‘deliberately took advantage of these people’, he had not drawn a ‘luxury lifestyle’ off the back of it.

‘But you weren’t putting yourself out to represent these people out of any sense of charity or benevolence – you were doing it because you wanted their money and you got their money,’ he added.

Wainwright, of Bromley Crescent, Ruislip, Middlesex, was jailed for a total of 22 months and ordered to pay £2,858 in compensation to be split between his victims.
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