Attempt to force investigation into Trump’s golf courses is rejected

A human rights organisation has failed to force Holyrood to investigate how Donald Trump paid for two Scottish golf courses.

Last October, lawyers acting for AVAAZ told judge Lord Sandison that Scottish ministers were wrong to not order an unexplained wealth order probe against the former US president.

The group wanted the Scottish Government to have a so-called McMafia probe on how Mr Trump obtained the funding for Menie golf course in Aberdeenshire and the Turnberry resort in Ayrshire.

The Scottish Green Party first called for an unexplained wealth order amid questions about how Mr Trump had managed to finance the purchases of the golf courses at Turnberry in 2014 and at Menie in Aberdeenshire in 2006.

Patrick Harvie, the

Greens co-leader, said Trump’s unusual pattern of spending and the ongoing civil and criminal cases in the US provided Scottish authorities with the grounds to investigate the businessman.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told the Scottish Parliament responsibility for the investigation lay with the Crown Office’s Civil Recovery Unit.

However, then Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said the law did allow the Scottish Government to launch an unexplained

wealth order investigation, which prompted AVAAZ to instruct lawyers to go to the Court of Session.

Scottish ministers contested the action, telling the court it had acted lawfully.

The judge, Lord Sandison, agreed with the submissions made by the government’s lawyers.

He wrote: “I shall repel the petitioner’s pleas in law, sustain the respondents’ second plea in law, and refuse the substantive prayers of the petition.”

Holyrood will not investigate golf course purchases.