Property plans tied to Trump man withdrawn
A trust with ties to one of Donald Trump’s most senior cabinet members has pulled controversial plans for a housing development in one of Scotland’s most desirable neighbourhoods.
The Rockshiel trust, listed by Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary, among his global portfolio of property holdings, has been trying for two years to build a cluster of upmarket townhous es and apartments in a sought-after conservation area of Edinburgh.
Its proposals for the new development in the capital’s Murrayfield area have been met with near universal opposition since they were first unveiled in January 2019, with scores of objections from local residents and concern from local authority officials.
Now it has emerged that the trust has withdrawn its contentious blueprints for the development in Murrayfield’s Kinellan Road.
The local community welcomed the withdrawal of the plans, and warned it stood ready to mount a “robust defence” should the trust revisit the development.
The Rockshiel trust is listed by Mr Mnuchin in his filings with the US Office of Government Ethics (OGE), a Washington Dc-based agency set up to root out conflicts of interest in the United States government.
It is among a multi-million pound portfolio of residential and commercial property, as well as numerous bank accounts, in Scotland which are detailed in Mr Mnuchin’s latest report to the Office of Government Ethics, filed in August last year.
The US Treasury has said it is listed on his financial disclosure forms because of his Scottish wife.