Crooked lawyer Alistair Blackwood told to repay just £1 after £1m laundering scam

Alistair Blackwood made over £1m in fraud but court says only £1 can be recovered

Disgraced lawyer Alistair Blackwood has been ordered to repay just £1 of the more than £1 million he pocketed from a sophisticated money laundering racket.

Blackwood, 70, once a practising solicitor at a Paisley law firm, was found to have benefited by £1,086,581 from his role in a series of fraudulent transactions. But at a hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh, prosecutors conceded that the cash is gone – leaving nothing to claw back.

Prosecutor Bryan Heaney told the court that Blackwood’s financial gain could not be recovered. He urged Judge John Morris KC to impose a token confiscation order requiring Blackwood to hand over £1 within three months to the sheriff clerk’s office in Perth. The judge agreed, warning that investigators could return to court if Blackwood were ever to come into property or assets in future.

Blackwood was convicted alongside fellow solicitors Iain Robertson, 72, and David Lyons, 74, as well as accomplices Mohammed Aziz, 63, and Robert Ferguson, 69. The gang channelled money through the client bank account of Robertson & Ross, a Paisley law firm, disguising dirty cash as legitimate transactions.

The fraudulent activity, exposed by a Law Society investigation, covered four major deals between May 2015 and July 2016.

• £79,340 was diverted from a stolen cheque meant for a Jersey law firm.
  
• £240,000 was siphoned from a fraudulent London property sale.
  
• £985,000 was stolen from the hacked account of a football club owner.
  
• £181,786 was pocketed in a sham house sale in Essex, with false documents used to pass Ferguson’s flat off as the seller’s home.
  

Each sum was laundered through the Paisley firm’s client account, with fake IDs, forged papers and fabricated records used to mask the crimes.

The nine-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow, presided over by Lord Richardson, revealed how the firm became a hub for organised fraud. Robertson, who had direct access to the firm’s client account, was described as being at the centre of the scheme. Both he and Blackwood have since been suspended by the Law Society.

During proceedings earlier this year, Robertson – representing himself in a separate confiscation bid – told a judge he could not attend court because he had been granted home leave from prison to attend a wedding. He admitted to having a week of leave every month.

Despite the convictions, Blackwood’s ill-gotten fortune has vanished. The Crown’s concession that there is no money left means the symbolic £1 order is all that can be enforced for now.

However, the judge emphasised that this is not the end of the matter. If Blackwood ever acquires property or other assets, the Crown can bring him back to court to seek recovery.

Meanwhile, proceeds of crime actions against Robertson, Lyons, Aziz and Ferguson are ongoing and are expected to return to court in the near future.

The case has once again raised questions about the vulnerability of client accounts to exploitation and the importance of oversight in the legal profession. For now, though, Blackwood faces the bitter irony of a £1 payment after a career that netted him more than a million in criminal gains – and ended in disgrace.