The trials of 2020 presented a different perspective to all of us, depending on which walk of life we had chosen to earn our bread and butter from, let’s say, a decade ago.For many more, decades long hard work went to waste within months, with lifetimes of careers and businesses going to waste rapidly.
There were those who pinched pennies and supplemented their lives with welfare cheques.In the less wealthy countries, people were less concerned about dying from COVID19.It was hunger and the absolute hopelessness that loomed over a failing, halted world economy.As we all know by now, the hip and stylish reference to the ‘new normal’ was a death sentence to the daily wage workers.
Then there were those, around the world, who had never been richer or more fortunate.This was not the first time humans and corporations were preying on human tragedies.
While this was happening, the same latter group of people and corporations found better ways of evading all social corporate responsibility including their responsibility to their country’s tax treasuries. A prime example was Britain but the USA was not far behind.It would not be unfair to say that a significant amount of Public Funds are now safely stashed away in dubious company accounts of offshore banks.
As our legal team goes further into the labyrinth of how laws were used to ‘serve the servants of people’ during a human tragedy, the entire lack of transparency in such contracts makes little sense.At this point it is hard to discern the difference between Pakistan and Britain and USA when it comes to an entirely indifferent government, conveniently using the law to serve its own ends.
In the coming days, months and years more scandals will unfold, whistleblowers will emerge and disputes will be opened over cross border transactions, sometimes over non-delivery, and at other over sale of substandard or counterfeit PPE.
The biggest set-back which is yet to occur as I have continued to observe since the beginning of the pandemic, is the use of laws and standards to discriminate against the goods of other countries.There is very little being done by the countries where we have governments not releasing PPE which has been bought with Public Funds, deliberately concealing who they awarded contract to and evading all attempts to come under the scrutiny of law.UK remains a prime example of this.And very shortly USA will become the next stop of litigation.
As more and more reports come forth as to why middlemen who could not tell the difference between a mask and a sandwich wrapper were allowed to ‘source’ PPE for governments and government suppliers, there is silence on how and where the money currently is.
I have spoken about the clever device of most of the PPE fraudsters to use Lawyers Escrow and IOLTA accounts for this purpose and the corrupt members of the Legal Community who never the let the funds leave the account once the Seller asks a buyer to Deposit money in their law accounts? It is still a large question mark and insult for the international legal community that a PPE Seller’s Escrow Lawyer does not seem to be bound by any rule of law but the ‘instructions’ of the seller, even if the latter has the modus operandi of fraudster.We understand the premise behind every human having the right to legal representation, regardless of how low they have gone on the scale of morality and ethics.But should lawyers, who set up Escrows for Dodgy criminals trying to steal money from people, be forgive for ‘following instructions of a client’? By all means this appears as being an accessory to crime rather than providing legal services.
This year alone we received thousands of letters of attestation by lawyers claiming that such and such XYZ, Tom Dick and Harry corporation had millions of dollars in their accounts, when the funds did not exist.In my opinion they should be named as accessories to phishing attempts by fraudulent buyers for valuable information from Sellers.
Unless Lawyers make it their business to look into a clients business before they agree to facilitate it in every single way, we are looking at a rapidly failing world in terms of trust, and credibility in the business community.It is a lawyer’s duty to look after the Sellers, Buyers and the Intermediaries in a contract to the extent that they should speak out if something fundamentally wrong is in front of their eyes.
This may seem like too much of a utopian view from my end, but lawyers contributing to dishonest schemes of business parties should be seen as a crime which should lead to proper criminal charges and not just a loss of a practice licence for such so called legal professionals.
