Solicitor who forged 200 visa claims

AN IMMIGRATION solicitor forged almost 200 visa applications by using details from genuine claimants for bogus clients.

Osman Sadiq, 30, copied details from legitimate applications under a law allowing foreign nationals to remain in the UK to act as carers to British citizens.

He charged up to £2,700 to ‘piggy-back’ them on to bogus applications, without telling the British sponsor.

Sadiq, a director at a solicitors firm in east London, admitted 12 counts of ‘using a false instrument’ to make up applications in the ‘deliberate and calculated’ scheme and was jailed for four years at Snaresbrook Crown Court in 2015.

In another case a lawyer made an immigration application knowing his client could be lying. Mansoor Ali, 39, proceeded with an appeal to remain in the UK despite the Pakistani client telling him he had been cheating the system for years.

By the time the appeal was rejected the man had been in the UK for nine years.

Ali, a partner in a Manchester law firm, was suspended indefinitely in June 2017 after a tribunal heard he had even noted the client’s confession in his file notes.