Omar Khan slapped with a three-year prison term last spring
A former criminal lawyer who was disbarred last month has now been struck off the roll as well.
Omar Khan was called to the bar in 2009 and went on to qualify as a solicitor three years later. However, he was disbarred by the Bar Standards Board (BSB) in February following his conviction for a serious drug-related offence.
Khan, a former lawyer at the Midlands office of The Johnson Partnership, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to supply a class A drug in March 2016. He was jailed for 40 months at Nottingham Crown Court.
A report at the time revealed that the conspiracy — which took place between 1 October and 1 December 2015 — involved three other men and the “recovery of 1kg (2.2lb) of cocaine.”
Taking a leaf out of the BSB’s book, a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) has now decided that Khan is no longer fit for practice as a solicitor. In a judgment published this week, the tribunal said that Khan — who is from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire — “caused harm to the reputation of the solicitors’ profession.”
Accepting that he had misused cocaine in the past, Khan claimed he was going to use the drugs found in his possession to repay a debt owed to one of his co-defendants. Continuing, the judgment revealed how the ex-lawyer was asked to drop one gram of cocaine off at the address of the co-defendant’s “friend”.
Initially refusing, Khan claimed “pressure, coercion and intimidation” led to him eventually going through with the drop-off. Unfortunately for Khan, who repeated the process the following day, the “friend” turned out to be an undercover police officer.
Khan argued that a fine, suspension or conditions on his practising certificate would be an appropriate sanction, and said that he was “disgusted and ashamed of his actions.” Continuing, the tribunal noted:
The respondent stated he was proud of his status as a solicitor, which he had worked extremely hard to achieve, having come from a humble and underprivileged background.
Despite his remorse, the SDT found that a striking off was “the appropriate and proportionate sanction in this case.” Khan, whose legal career is all but over, was ordered to pay £1,337 in costs.
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