-- Compensation for violent crime victims nationwide

When you hear the term criminal lawyer, you don’t normally associate it with lawyers undertaking criminal acts.

However, it seems members of the legal profession are as susceptible to behaving on the wrong side of the law as the rest of us.

Maybe having great knowledge of criminal law gives those legal eagles a greater sense of how to get away with a criminal act, or bend the rules.

Alas for one retired British solicitor this didn’t work out as 72 year old Anthony Blok was jailed recently for four years.

Blok only retired from practicing after being charged by police in November 2006, following an investigation into the theft and attempted sale of a painting worth £500,000.

Over a ten year period Blok assisted a client of his, in attempting to sell a painting worth £500,000, which had been stolen from an elderly lady living on the Isle of Man.

The jury at Croydon Crown Court found Blok guilty of money laundering, perjury and perverting the course of justice.

In 2006 another two solicitors in Britain were jailed for offences related to money laundering.

Brian Dougan from Northern Ireland was jailed for three months after he admitted using his firm's business account to handle money from a money laundering scam.

He helped Thomas McCague to buy eleven houses from the proceeds of the scam, and admitted allowing criminal property to pass through his account.

Meanwhile Phillip Griffiths, a solicitor based in Shrewsbury in the county of Shropshire, was jailed for 15 months for not reporting an act of money laundering.

Griffiths acted on a sale of a house being sold for much less than its true value, having been told the sale was designed to help some friends who were having difficulties paying their mortgage.

However, the owners were actually drug traffickers trying to prevent the house being considered as an asset, for fear it would be confiscated during a proceeds of crime hearing.

Solicitors have a duty, as does anyone, to report any suspicion of money laundering activity.

Some would say that they should know this better than anyone, and comply with the law in the same way everyone else does.

A more worrying case arose in Northern Ireland earlier this year when a solicitor was given a 10 year jail sentence for inciting murder.

Manmohan Sandhu was found guilty of inciting loyalist paramilitaries for murder as well as three counts of perverting the course of justice.

The case centered around the attempted murder of a taxi driver, and the murders of two men during a power struggle between opposing terrorist organizations.

As well as incitement to murder he used his role as a solicitor to keep members of one of the terrorist organisations aware of how police investigations were going.

The president of the Law Society of Northern Ireland Barry Finlay said afterwards: "Every solicitor's duty is to uncompromisingly uphold the rule of law. Mr Sandhu has betrayed his duty to do so and in so doing he has betrayed his profession and his professional colleagues."

Fortunately these cases are very rare and we can rest assured that the majority of solicitors in Britain are honest and would never dream of breaking the law.