Widow of 'untouchable' drug dealer stripped of £350k of assets by court

THE widow of a drugs baron who boasted to police that he was too smart to be caught has been stripped of assets worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Lee Smith was a major player in the international drugs underworld. However, despite repeated attempts, detectives never managed to gather enough evidence to secure a conviction in the criminal courts.

Yesterday, however, three years after he died aged 32, the Crown Office won an order under civil law to seize from his widow, Claire, four properties in Glasgow and almost 50,000. It is understood the properties are worth more than 300,000.

The Crown Office's civil recovery unit asked Lord Bracadale at the Court of Session in Edinburgh to make an order under the Proceeds of Crime Act in respect of the Smith family home in Briarcroft Drive, Glasgow, and three flats in Woodville Street, Glasgow, owned by Mrs Smith. Money held in three bank accounts was also targeted.

The court was told Smith had only a few convictions for assault dating from the early 1990s, although police suspected he had then become heavily involved in the drugs trade.

Smith, who died in August 2006 in unsuspicious circumstances, had been a prime suspect in an unsolved gangland double murder in 1999.

The bodies of two men who had been shot and burned were found in a field in East Lothian.

A retired detective described to the court how Smith had told him, while they were alone in a detention room in Shettleston police station in 1998, that he was dealing drugs and was too smart for the police.

A car in which Smith was a passenger was stopped on the M77 near Newton Mearns in 2005. Officers found a stun gun, a belt rolled up as a knuckle-duster, ski masks, gloves, an axe, a 12in knife, and a rope and chicken wire.

Smith claimed to work at Bellshill Tyre & Exhaust, and as a subcontractor in the construction industry.

Lord Bracadale said: "I am driven by the evidence to conclude on a balance of probabilities that Lee Smith was engaged in unlawful conduct … in the supply of controlled drugs over a period of years between the mid-1990s and his death in 2006."

Lord Bracadale ruled the house, flats and money had been obtained by unlawful conduct and were recoverable under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini, QC, said: "This is an important case, demonstrating that the Civil Recovery Unit is determined to pursue illegally obtained assets, even after the death of the respondent."