Moved on: Caroline Harraway now runs a nursery and fitness centre
Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
Ms L.N. writes: I am having problems locating my will, which was prepared by Harraway Law, of Cottingham in East Yorkshire, and stored with it. I was unaware that the solicitors had closed down. I received no communication to inform me of the closure. My only request is that my will should be returned to me.
Tony Hetherington replies: It is now three months since I reported on the chaos at Harraway Law.
The firm’s boss Caroline Harraway walked out of her own firm last June. It struggled on for a few more weeks until it closed down on July 21.
Since then, a steady stream of clients say they paid up front for work which has not been done, or – like you – they need to retrieve personal papers held by the firm.
You have done your best. You emailed, but there was no reply. You telephoned, but the firm’s line was dead. You went to Harraway Law’s offices but found a new company had moved in.
In fact, Caroline Harraway seems to have abandoned not just her firm but her career as a lawyer. She now runs a pre-school centre and nursery, and a fitness centre.
Her law firm’s past is catching up with her, though. She failed to file accounts that were due last September, and officials at Companies House began proceedings to strike off her company. Those proceedings have been suspended, which typically means there is an investigation going on, or that creditors have objected.
None of this will be new to Ms Harraway. She previously ran Orion Law, a firm of solicitors in Hull. It was compulsorily struck off by Companies House three years ago.
So where does this leave you and your will? The watchdog body for law firms is the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.
It tells solicitors to put clients’ interests first if they plan to close down, and warns them: ‘If you do not obtain proper consent from clients about where they want their money and papers to go, you could act in breach of trust, breach confidentiality, and become subject to a complaint by the client to the Legal Ombudsman Service. There could also be disciplinary consequences.
‘Ultimately, if clients’ interests are at risk, we might have to intervene. For example, if you are insolvent, abandon your practice or do not secure client files. If we have to do this, we recoup the cost of doing so from you. The costs are generally quite high.’
The SRA is now actively investigating Harraway Law. One official told me: ‘We have had a number of similar complaints about the return of files from other former clients, so we are looking into the firm’s potential failure to close in an orderly manner.’
If Caroline Harraway fails to return your will and all the other documents she held for her clients, then the SRA will ‘intervene’, which means it will use its powers to appoint another firm to go in and seize Harraway Law’s files.
The SRA asks that anyone who is facing problems in obtaining papers held by the firm should get in touch by going to sra.org.uk/home/contact-us.
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
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Justin Etzin
The Insolvency Service has slapped a six-year directorship ban on what must be one of the most colourful characters it has investigated for a long time.
Justin Etzin featured regularly in gossip columns in the 1990s, when the public school-educated whizz-kid, barely out of his teens himself, organised controversial nightclub events for even younger schoolchildren from well-off families. Guests at his bashes included the then teenage Prince William and Tony Blair’s son Euan.
In 1999, I warned that Etzin was behind a guide that was charging hundreds of pounds to pubs and other venues for advertisements on where to celebrate the end of the 20th Century. Advertisers were promised that the guide would have more than 1,000 pages and that half a million copies would be distributed free of charge.
If it ever appeared, I must have been one of the unlucky ones who failed to see a copy. At the time, Etzin was 23 years old and had already been a director of 19 companies, of which seven had been dissolved.
Two years later in 2001, I warned against Etzin again, this time over allegations that he was behind a scheme to smuggle duty free cigarettes into the country. Customers paid up front for cartons of cigarettes to be sent through the post from Europe. Many were simply seized and burnt by Customs officers. By then, as well as failed companies, Etzin had notched up at least five court judgments for personal debts.
And then Etzin pretty much dropped out of sight, emerging – bizarrely – as an international diplomat a decade later, when he was appointed Seychelles Consul General in Los Angeles. In 2012, he held the same position in New York as well as being accredited to represent the Seychelles, where he was born, at the United Nations.
Etzin says his role in New York ended in 2019, but he is remembered in the Big Apple for complaints that he leased apartments, only to sublet them on Airbnb to tourists and party throwers.
Curiously, Etzin’s Facebook page threatens the governments of the US and Canada: ‘You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein.’ Although the Facebook page is public, Etzin says the contents are ‘private and legally privileged and confidential’.
The British directorship ban on Etzin came into force last Wednesday and follows an investigation into his company Resolution Real Estate Limited. In 2016, police recorded a number of incidents of violent crime and disorder at Altitude 360, a club at Millbank Tower in London. The company was the licence holder, and the man behind the company was Etzin, even though he lived in New York.
The company collapsed in 2018, and enquiries by the Insolvency Service have found that Etzin failed to keep financial records. The business did not even have its own bank account, and £300,000 had disappeared into an account in Switzerland. It failed to pay its landlord, resulting in a court order against it for £941,301, plus interest of £138,000 and costs of £250,000.
Etzin is now banned until March 2028 from forming any UK company, or promoting it, or acting as a director. He remains the boss of businesses in the Seychelles though.
