Kenny MacAskill hails £1.25m seized in a year from crime gangs in Scotland

More than £1 million in cash has been seized from criminal gangs in Scotland in less than a year, it has been revealed.

The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency (SCDEA) has confiscated 1.25m since last April - more than six times the total for 2009-10 (207,000).

It marks a new approach by the unit, which is increasingly focused on disrupting gangs' activities at an early stage, before the cash can be invested in drugs to turn more profit.

The SCDEA said it was causing "unprecedented turmoil" to the activities and profitability of crime outfits.

The majority of the cash was seized during raids on property and vehicles.

The SCDEA director general, Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Meldrum, said: "Organised crime groups don't just deal in drugs - they deal in commodities."

The 1.25m cash would buy 56kg of heroin or 27kg of cocaine - the equivalent to 448,000 "street level" deals of heroin worth 4.48m or 270,000 deals of cocaine worth 10.8m.

Justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said: "This is excellent news for decent people across Scotland. As well as stopping thousands of kilos of drugs from reaching our streets, our police are targeting the hard cash that enables the gangsters to complete their dirty deals."