Solicitors Regulation Authority

The U.K. Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) has referred former Gibson Dunn & Crutcher partner Peter Gray to the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal, five years after the High Court ruled he had "deliberately misled" a court during a high-profile case.

The SRA referred Gray to the SDT last year, according to a ruling published by the regulator on Thursday.

The referral relates to Gray's involvement in a case involving the Republic of Djibouti and one of its wealthiest citizens, Abdourahman Boreh.

Boreh had been convicted of terrorism for his involvement in a 2009 attack, in part because of the evidence Gray had submitted. The High Court ruled in 2015 that Gray, who was a partner at Gibson Dunn at the time, had "deliberately misled" the court with incorrectly dated evidence, and Boreh's conviction was later overturned when the dating error emerged.

The regulator said in a published decision on Thursday that there is a case to answer in respect to the allegations that "[Gray] swore an affidavit in support of Client A's application to the High Court for a freezing injunction and other orders which was misleading as to matters of fact known to him, and known by him to be material to the Application, and in doing so allowed the court to be misled".

Gray left Gibson Dunn in 2015. He set up his own practice, Kingsgrove Partners, and in 2017 began co-leading a new firm following the merger of Kingsgrove Partners with United Arab Emirates (UAE) outfit Mohammed Al-Dahbashi Advocates.

Gray was contacted for comment.