A solicitor was accused yesterday of being at the centre of a dishonest trade in bogus feudal titles sold to Americans and other foreigners.

Roger Pitts-Tucker did the paperwork for Antony Bouda, who sold feudal titles on the internet, the Solicitors Disciplinary tribunal in London was told.

Mr Pitts-Tucker, of New Barnet, Hertfordshire, who runs his own law firm in London, acted improperly in the sale of 255 titles and made “deceitful or improper” suggestions to buyers, the tribunal heard. He allegedly gave the fake titles a stamp of legality.

He also failed to account for money paid to him for the work, witnessed signatures without being present and acted for both buyer and seller in what amounted to a “conflict of interest”, it was alleged.

Mr Pitts-Tucker denies seven charges of conduct unbefitting a solicitor relating to a specimen 13 transactions involving the sale of feudal titles for between £3,000 and £20,000 each. Across the 13 transactions, there were 57 alleged instances of professional misconduct between 1999 and 2003.

The 13 titles related to areas named as Bywell in England; Mount Nagle, Carrowreagh and Clonakilty in Ireland; Clissa and Nona in Croatia; De Laci in France; Halberstadt in Germany; and Bovanti in Albania.

Patricia Robertson, QC, for the Solicitors Regulation Authority, said that between 1999 and 2003 Mr Pitts-Tucker had been involved in the sale of titles — chiefly baronies or lordships of the manor — by Mr Bouda, who ran a company called British Feudal Investments.

She told the tribunal that the titles were not being sold as “vanity titles, or just a pretty bit of paper you [could] put on your wall. They [were] being sold as something of real and appraising value, or at the very least, as an interesting but real bit of history.”

Mr Pitts-Tucker’s firm was doing the conveyancing, she added. His fees from Mr Boada over that period were just over £120,000 or about £30,000 a year.

The solicitor who referred Mr Bouda to Mr Pitts Tucker described the businessman as “fishy”, the tribunal was told. Yet Mr Pitts-Tucker had made no inquiries then or at any time to satisfy himself as to the validity of the feudal titles.

Mr Pitts-Tucker vigorously denies that the transactions were dubious or fraudulent in any way or that he breached the solicitors’ professional conduct rules.

He maintains that his role was not akin to doing the conveyance for a property transaction and that it was for the buyers to satisfy themselves as to what they were buying.

His counsel, Gregory Treverton-Jones, QC, will argue that at all times Mr Pitts-Tucker believed that Mr Boada was legitimately able to sell the titles in question; that he was not acting for the buyers but only for Mr Boada and that he was only instructed after buyers had entered into the sale agreement.

There is a thriving is specialist market in feudal titles in which researchers look for defunct titles not claimed by any surviving member of the famiily and then try to sell the titles, claiming to possess them. The hope is to find a title which may have within its area some unregistered common land.

The hearing continues.

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