One in every of Scotland’s richest males has been named and shamed as a deliberate tax cheat, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
Taxi tycoon Steven Malcolm and his Glasgow Personal Rent agency, which has had hundreds of thousands in council contracts, had been outed by HMRC over payments totalling £316,000.
The taxman mentioned each had been “deliberate tax defaulters” between 2013 and 2019 in an inventory revealed on Wednesday.
The controversial businessman, who has been related to organised crime figures, was fined £32,141 by the taxman over an unpaid invoice of £76,526.
Glasgow Personal Rent Ltd – which Malcolm has been a director of since its launch in 1999 – was fined £61,544 over an unpaid invoice of £146,535.
In the course of the six-year interval of unpaid tax, Glasgow Personal Rent was awarded a share of at the very least £62million in profitable contracts to offer transport for Glasgow Metropolis Council and different public our bodies together with the jail service, Scottish Authorities, Scottish Courts Service, housing associations and universities throughout Glasgow.
And since 2017 different personal rent companies run by Malcolm have been awarded contracts price at the very least £6.2million.
The tax scandal has led to requires native authorities to assessment multi-million-pound public contracts given to his taxi firms.
Scottish Conservative shadow neighborhood security minister Russell Findlay MSP mentioned: “Exhausting-working Scots who pay their taxes will rightly query how any tax defaulter is ready to obtain profitable public sector contracts.
“Whereas it's reassuring to see HMRC recovering tax money owed and publicly naming these accountable, public our bodies should guarantee not a penny of taxpayers’ money ought to find yourself enriching those that fail to pay what they owe.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat chief Alex Cole-Hamilton has known as for a right away assessment of contracts given to Malcolm’s different companies.
He mentioned: “Public contracts of any form ought to solely be given to people and corporations who function in a match and correct approach. These revelations will surely name that into query right here.
“We have to make sure that firms who profit from taxpayers’ money are paying their approach on the subject of tax themselves.”
HMRC publishes an inventory of what it refers to as “tax cheats” each three months after usually long-running investigations into the monetary affairs of a person or enterprise.
The taxman mentioned these named as “deliberate tax defaulters” are given ample alternative to right the errors earlier than penalties are issued and so they seem on the revealed listing.
These named publicly have both “dedicated VAT or excise wrongdoing”, “intentionally offered a number of inaccurate paperwork” or “did not adjust to an HMRC obligation”.
Investigators say particulars is not going to be revealed if the taxpayer “has offered a full and speedy disclosure when HMRC begins to research or previous to any investigation” and doesn't title and disgrace these penalised “as a result of particular person’s careless, relatively than
deliberate, behaviour”.
Malcolm, also referred to as The Fats Controller, owned 900 of the 1100 shares in Glasgow Personal Rent earlier than the corporate merged with Hampden Vehicles and Southside Radio Vehicles to kind GlasGo Cabs in 2021.
The brand new agency is run by Hampden Vehicles boss Stephen Conley, whose plush Newlands dwelling was sprayed with bullets in 2006 in what was described as a mini cab “turf battle”.
Malcolm has relinquished his majority stake in Glasgow Personal Rent for the reason that merger however was in charge of it on the time the tax anomalies occurred and remains to be listed on Firms Home as a director.
When contacted, a consultant for Malcolm mentioned the tax had been paid.
She mentioned: “When the demand for cost was made, it was there-after paid throughout the agreed timescale – i.e. it was paid on time.”
Malcolm, who owns a £9million dwelling subsequent to the Gleneagles five-star lodge and golf complicated in Perthshire, has beforehand tried to distance himself from hyperlinks to Scotland’s felony underworld.
Convicted fraudster Barry Hughes beforehand occupied a home in Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, owned by the taxi boss. One other of his properties, a £260,000 pad in Crookston, Glasgow, was additionally dwelling to a convicted drug baron.
Malcolm has additionally been related to Steven “Bonzo” Daniel – of the Daniel crime household – inviting him to observe a Rangers match at his Ibrox hospitality suite simply hours earlier than the gangster was brutalised with a machete in 2017.
In July that yr, two months after the assault, Malcolm purchased KeyCars, an organization linked to Daniel.
The transaction occurred three years after we photographed Malcolm leaving his Glasgow Personal Rent HQ with Daniel and a convicted drug supplier.
In addition to the hundreds of thousands of contracts handed to Glasgow Personal Rent, the Sunday Mail can reveal Malcolm’s different two taxi companies – Penny Vehicles and Renfrewshire Cab Co – have additionally been given a share of hundreds of thousands in public contracts by councils.
North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire councils have handed the 2 companies dozens of contracts to offer transport for disabled youngsters, deliver meals to residents and for taxi providers.
In January this yr Renfrewshire Cab Co was given a share of £4million by Renfrewshire Council for advert hoc taxi providers and to take disabled youngsters to and from college, whereas Penny Vehicles has been handed greater than £2.2million by North Lanarkshire Council since 2017 to deliver pensioners to day centres, take disabled youngsters to high school and supply common taxi providers for the council. In 2021 Penny Vehicles was given a share of £2.1million for “scheduled and advert hoc taxi providers”.
The HMRC mentioned the division was “dedicated to creating certain folks pay the tax they owe” and they might title and disgrace “these penalised underneath civil procedures for intentionally defaulting on sure tax obligations”.
North Lanarkshire Council mentioned: “All contractual preparations which the council has in place for the supply of providers are topic to assessment, significantly within the occasion any pertinent new data is made obtainable to us.”
Renfrewshire Council mentioned: “We consider tenders for public contracts consistent with our standing orders and nationwide procurement rules. The place there's a suggestion of a possible problem with a contract, we might examine and think about an applicable plan of action.”