Vancouver lawyer who wired $2.7 million to Dubai for client under a U.S. stock investigation handed suspension
Neal Burton Wang failed to obtain, record and verify client identification documents in relation to several client matters, said a panel.
A Law Society of B.C. tribunal has handed Vancouver lawyer Neal Burton Wang a four-month suspension for professional misconduct.
The misconduct relates to several findings upheld in a review last year, including that Wang had not made reasonable inquiries to get information about the people and companies involved in, and the purpose behind, transactions when he wired $2.7 million from his lawyer’s trust account to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The professional misconduct took place between 2016 and 2018, and involved several different transactions. Those also included the sale of a Toronto condo involving a company in the Caribbean island of Nevis, which did not have a bank account, and where Wang did not know who were the beneficial owners of the company.
The panel noted Wang failed to obtain, record and verify client identification documents in relation to several client matters, which form a critical part of the law society’s anti-money-laundering and anti-fraud safeguards.
The panel added that the purpose of the client identification and verification regime is to protect both the public and the integrity of the profession from exploitation for illegal purposes.
Wang did not immediately respond Thursday to a request for comment.
The panel said while Wang, who started practising as a lawyer in 1999, had no prior disciplinary history, which might be considered a mitigating factor, in this instance the breaches were neither minor nor technical.
An earlier panel found that in June 2018 Wang was instructed on two separate days to wire a total of nearly $2.72 million he held in his trust account to a company in Dubai. The panel noted that one of the clients Wang was dealing with was the subject of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation in which “very serious” allegations were made against him.
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The panel found that instead of making inquiries about the transactions, Wang had said he was relieved to finally get instructions and get rid of funds that were making him uncomfortable. That panel found that Wang’s discomfort should have prompted earlier action as he seemed “utterly unconcerned” that he may be helping commit dishonesty, fraud or crime.
That panel had also found there was some evidence that Wang had backdated documents to make it seem he had done work for the transactions, and decided his testimony could not be relied on.
The law society did not allege Wang facilitated money laundering, but instead that he failed to comply with society rules and that he did not fulfil his professional gatekeeping responsibility in allowing his account to be used without performing substantial legal services in connection with the financial transactions and without making inquiries about the source of funds or the nature of the transactions.
The B.C. government-commissioned Cullen inquiry highlighted in 2022 that lawyers’ trust accounts pose significant risks from a money-laundering perspective. Because trust accounts are assumed to be privileged information between lawyer and client, they are generally out of reach for law enforcement, noted the commission.
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