Hong Guo, a former mayoral candidate in Richmond, B.C., has been disbarred from practising law in the province after a Law Society of B.C. panel found her to be unfit and unable to rehabilitate her professional conduct.
Guo was previously suspended for one year, starting on March 8, after being found guilty of professional misconduct that ended up facilitating her accountant’s theft of $7.5 million in client funds.
The panel had previously found that Guo failed to supervise her staff, failed to comply with fiduciary accounting rules and left blank signed fiduciary cheques with her accountant, which it said ultimately led to the thefts, which took place between January 2014 and October 2016.
In declaring Guo unfit, the panel cited this case along with a long list of other misconduct violations – including acting in a conflict of interest in a real estate deal.
“The panel finds that the law society has clearly established, on a balance of probabilities, that the respondent is ungovernable,” the tribunal’s decision reads. “Her [professional conduct record] is lengthy, serious and highly aggravating.”
Guo was supervised by another lawyer from 2017 until her suspension in March, with the lawyer expected to report on her trust account and day-to-day business.
However, the Law Society’s manager of professional conduct told the panel that it was “extremely difficult” to monitor her daily activities and that it was taking up a significant amount of resources.
Among the various breaches of the law society’s code of conduct – including a “consistent failure” to respond to inquiries, misleading clients and breaching an order not to handle trust funds – Guo was also found to have neglected her duties when it came to reporting money in a trust account.
“On November 4, 2018, the respondent wrote to Mr Wedel, a law society staff lawyer, stating that real estate transactions cannot be used for money laundering,” the panel wrote.
“The respondent is wrong, and there is a risk that real estate transactions could be used for money laundering.”
Guo’s misconduct, related to the theft of $7.5 million by her accountant in 2016, was under investigation at the time she ran for mayor of Richmond in 2018. She won about five per cent of the vote in that election.
The court found that after discovering the thefts, Guo misappropriated money from other clients to complete pending property transactions.
The affected clients were eventually compensated by Guo personally and by a $4 million insurance policy.
Guo says conduct was not intentionally misleading
In her response to the investigation, Guo argued that she did not benefit financially from any misconduct and that it did not adversely affect her clients.
She argued that disbarment was not warranted and instead argued for a one-year suspension to run concurrently with her current suspension.
“The respondent submits that any disciplinary sanction must take into account the often unconscious bias of how non-Asian lawyers perceive Asian lawyers,” the court’s decision said.
Guo also told the panel that any misconduct was “largely due to her busy practice and not to any deliberate or premeditated malice or deceit”.
However, the panel found that the only appropriate sanction to protect the B.C. public was Guo’s disbarment.
“This panel has no confidence that the respondent will rehabilitate herself or improve her practice,” the decision reads. “Her overall pattern of conduct is one of entrenched non-compliance and non-cooperation.”