Scotland’s police forces are to develop a formal channel of communication to alert legitimate companies to the criminal histories of trading partners and contractors in a bid to tackle organised crime. The move to disrupt cash supply to criminals comes after detectives uncovered crime links to nearly 300 firms in and around Glasgow alone.

For the first time, forces across Scotland are developing ways of passing on once-secret information to private-sector firms to cut off cash supply to criminal gangs after it was revealed that almost 300 organisations have links to organised crime in Glasgow alone. The new initiative will see senior officers informing vetted executives at respected companies of the criminal histories of organisations they might be planning to work with.

While acknowledging the value of such a scheme, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce chief executive Stuart Patrick also warned of potential drawbacks to the business community: “We would actively support any procedure which helped protect businesses, the vast majority of which are completely legitimate, from becoming inadvertently involved with criminals. The only caveat is that there would have to be some sort of appeals procedure available to any company which felt it was being wrongly labelled as having criminal connections.”