UK: Solicitor accused of laundering for clients

"Travellers" are amongst the most disliked communities in Britain. They are variously regarded as inherently dishonest, dirty and parasitic.

The reasons for this are, often, self-inflicted: their lifestyle means they never have proper jobs or careers, they simply arrive on land and set up camp and when they leave they more often than not leave the site in a disgusting state covered in rubbish and toilet waste. Everywhere they camp, there are immediately stories of petty theft of everything from plant-pots from front porches to washing from lines at the rear of houses and the old-standby fraud of selling "lucky heather" irritates residents.

Certainly, wherever the "travellers" set up, the workload of the police increases dramatically.

This leads to hostility on both sides. Those who defend the travellers against actions to remove them from land - and those who act for them when they purchase land in order to put down roots - are often shunned.

So when James Muirhead agreed to act for a group of travellers in relation to property purchases, he was already going to find himself in conflict with local residents and, incidentally, the police who more often than not want the travellers - who make often spurious claims to be Romany and therefore a race - to move on so as to become someone else's problem.

Unfortunately, the "travellers" Muirhead took on as clients were indeed living off the proceeds of crime.

Joseph Rooney had, prosecutors say, made "large amounts" from value added tax fraud based on trade in cars and mortgage fraud. A second hand car dealer called Philip Edgehill from Newbery in Berkshire introduced him to Muirhead. Rooney used a false identity to shield his criminal assets - a fact, prosecutors say, that was known to Muirhead.

Muirhead, documents produced in court showed, set up a company in the BVI and property was transferred to that name to distance it from Rooney.

Much evidence was obtained when, because Muirhead was a suspect not a potential witness, police were able to get orders to search the offices of his law firm Thorburn & Co in Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire.

Muirhead denies the charges.