Police urged to investigate Scottish Enterprise executive over land deals

Allegations of "murky dealings" to sell land to supermarkets in East Kilbride have already seen Michael McCann, the area's Labour MP and a former South Lanarkshire councillor, investigated and cleared of wrongdoing, while Tesco and Asda have taken each other on in the courts over the controversy.

Now Mr McCann has asked Strathclyde Police to look into the dealings of Stephen Gallagher, the former managing director of Scottish Enterprise Commercial, over attempts to sell industrial land at West Mains Road, East Kilbride, to Dawn Developments, which in turn wanted to sell it to Asda.

The MP claims that, in a letter, Mr Gallagher offered the council "financial inducements" to grant planning permission to the developer. In another letter, the MP claims, Mr Gallagher threatened legal action if the council supported a planning application by Tesco on other land owned by the council.

The complaints have been made to Scottish Enterprise chief Lena Wilson by the council's chief executive Archibald Strang, although an internal investigation cleared Mr Gallagher.

But the MP believes that an outside body is needed to look into the matter.

He said: "Mr Gallagher may have committed a crime when he wrote these letters and I have asked the Chief Constable, Stephen House, to investigate.

"I believe it is in the public interest to discover why a senior manager in an organisation funded by the taxpayer is apparently secretly offering to hand out huge sums of public money on the basis of a planning decision."

A planning application was made for a supermarket at the West Mains site by Dawn Developments in October 2008 after the developer bought the land from Scottish Enterprise in a deal brokered by Mr Gallagher.

However, by then the council had put provision in its local plan for a supermarket to be built on property it owned and intended to sell to Tesco, so it turned down the application.

Mr Gallagher then wrote the letters to the council's chief executive which Mr McCann has demanded the police investigate.

The issue is also still subject to a judicial review, with Asda, challenging the council's planning policy.

Scottish Enterprise said yesterday: "We've been completely open and transparent."

Mr Gallagher, who left Scottish Enterprise in a redundancy programme along with 12 other directors, said: "I understand that the transaction to dispose of land at West Mains Road was audited and given a clean bill of health by Scottish Enterprse auditors."