A Vancouver lawyer specializing in real estate conveyancing has had her three-month suspension upheld by the Law Society of BC, according to a review board decision.
On Sep. 18, 2020, a law society hearing panel determined Florence Esther Louie Yen permitted the use of her firm’s trust accounts to receive and/or disburse about US$10 million from offshore sources without providing substantial legal services or making reasonable inquiries about the circumstances of the funds.
The hearing panel raised the point that Yen’s misconduct opened the door for money laundering to have potentially occurred through her accounts.
Yen, the hearing panel stated, “was at best wilfully blind in allowing her firm’s trust accounts to be used and manipulated in this manner. This Panel cannot definitively conclude that money laundering occurred, but it is not our role to make that determination.
“Nevertheless, if money laundering did in fact occur, it could not have happened without the participation and assistance of [Yen], however inadvertent such assistance may have been.”
The review board agreed, in a decision posted Feb. 16, with the original decision; however, only in part as it did find that a second ruling of professional misconduct — that Yen failed to record source of funds in relation to one or more transactions in 2015 — was incorrect.
As part of the review, the society sought a six-month suspension, arguing the original decision was too lenient. The review board settled with maintaining the three-month suspension despite the second allegation being reversed.
“The absence of this finding might be expected to decrease the sanction in this matter, however we are of the view that any decrease in the sanction would have to be weighed against any increase we might be inclined to impose…” noted the review board.
The society, the hearing panel noted in its original decision, acts as oversight for lawyers who are “gatekeepers” of trust accounts, which are not to be used as a conduit for non-legal purposes.
“The reason for this is that lawyers are granted the privilege of operating trust accounts without scrutiny or interference by government authorities such as FINTRAC (Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada). This exemption from government scrutiny arises from the principle that trust funds are protected by solicitor-client privilege. This privilege carries with it the weighty obligation of ensuring that trust accounts are not misused or that rules governing their use skirted or outright circumvented.”
B.C.’s public inquiry into money laundering, which concluded last year has produced a number of recommendations for the society and legal system at large to shore up defences against trust account abuse in the absence of reporting requirements.
Yen was called to the B.C. bar in 1995, according to the decision.
At 52 years old, Yen was considered by the hearing panel as “an experienced solicitor with an active solicitor’s practice predominantly in the area of real estate conveyancing. She has been a sole practitioner for several years and is one of only a few Cantonese-speaking lawyers in private practice in the Lower Mainland.”
