Lai See | Annells sidesteps investigation into business practices

Deborah Annells, the Hong Kong-based tax consultant who was found to have handled clients' money dishonestly by a professional body in Britain, has resigned from another industry body which had started to investigate her.

Annells, the founder and managing director of AzureTax, was found in July to have committed six instances of dishonesty by the disciplinary tribunal of Britain's Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) and was expelled.

Recently she resigned from the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP), the worldwide professional association for practitioners dealing with family inheritance and succession planning.

Following her expulsion from CIOT, both the Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA) and STEP started preliminary investigations to see whether there was a case for mounting a disciplinary investigation. Members of STEP's disciplinary panel were due to meet next week to consider her case, but Annells has pre-empted this meeting by resigning from STEP.

"We were investigating the evidence before deciding whether or not to take the process forward, to a formal disciplinary investigation," said STEP chief executive David Harvey, adding: "Clearly her resignation was adjacent to the press coverage."

Although Annells maintains she has not been dishonest CIOT found her personally to have acted dishonestly on six occasions. Two of these charges include submitting "two applications to add an Azure service company as a bank signatory to a client company's bank account without the knowledge of their owners". The police arrested her in December 2011 but have yet to charge her, and 18 months later are still, apparently, investigating her.

On her company website Annells incorrectly says neither of these two professional organisations were investigating her. That is now partially true as she has pre-empted a decision by STEP on whether to formally investigate her, by resigning.