Anger over GBP10,000 grant for convicted drug dealer's luxury yacht

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 7, 2008 | by Paul Hutcheon Investigations Editor

SCOTLAND's jobs quango is under pressure to explain why it gave GBP10,000 of public money to a luxury yacht business run by a convicted drug dealer.

Clyde Executive Charters (CEC) secured the grant from Scottish Enterprise Glasgow weeks after it was formed this year.

CEC is jointly owned by Gerald Ferguson - a former bankrupt who was jailed in 2003 for his part in a GBP21,000 cannabis deal.

Scottish Enterprise recently published details of all the awards it has granted this year under GBP25,000. On the list was a GBP10,000 "marketing support" grant from Scottish Enterprise for CEC, a limited liability partnership set up in February by Ferguson and lecturer Paul Dougan.

The cash was used to help launch a luxury yacht, Helen of Glasgow, from a pontoon next to the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the Clyde. The company allows access to the vessel for trips across the west of Scotland at a cost of GBP3000 per day or GBP18,000 for a weekly charter.

A press release promoting the business stated that the yacht provided for "presentation and communication facilities, video and telephone conferencing".

However, MSPs have criticised the award after it emerged that Ferguson was a convicted drug dealer and former bankrupt.

Documents obtained by the Sunday Herald show that CEC secured its GBP10,000 grant just weeks after the business was incorporated.

An email to Dougan from the then Scottish Enterprise official Karin Finegan, on March 20 this year, suggests the application for funding was filled in by the SE employee.

"To complete the procedures on our offer of assistance to you, I need a competed [sic] application form from you. To save time, I've taken the liberty of filling this in. Could you look at this please and fill in anything else you can.

I'm meeting Gerry this afternoon and can ask him to sign it, " it stated.

The application projected turnover of GBP670,000 and provided a full "project description" for the yacht firm.

The GBP10,000 grant was subsequently awarded to the business.

Ferguson, 51, was found guilty in 2003 of supplying cannabis following a high-profile trial in Glasgow along with former boxing champion Paul Weir.

The trial heard how detectives had been watching Weir's Volkswagen Golf before it pulled up next to a Renault Laguna in a hotel car park in Muirhead, Lanarkshire.

The court heard that Ferguson got out of Weir's car and took a black plastic bag containing five kilos of cannabis from the Renault, which was when police swooped.

Weir and Ferguson were reported to have blamed each other for the drug run, but the pair were both found guilty and jailed for 30 months each.

Ferguson's record as a businessman is also mixed.

According to the register of insolvencies, a government-funded database, the former drug dealer was declared bankrupt in 2001 following a petition lodged by Railtrack PLC. His debts were recorded as totalling GBP145,880, although his bankruptcy was later discharged.

As a former director in the nowdefunct Glasgow Car Company Ltd, Ferguson acted as the chauffeur for convicted rapist Mike Tyson when the ex-boxer fought in Glasgow in 2000.

A Scottish Enterprise spokesman said:

"All grant applications are subject to a rigorous assessment against a set criteria, and would have to show that a successful award would lead to real business benefits for the company involved."

John Wilson, an SNP MSP for Central Scotland, said he would be writing to Scottish Enterprise about the issues raised by the CEC grant.

He said: "It is vital Scottish Enterprise carry out rigorous background checks to ensure there can be no accusations made about individuals or fi rms whose history may be questionable."

Bill Aitken, Conservative MSP for Glasgow, said: "One would have thought that Scottish Enterprise would have examined the background to this company.

"If they did so, and made the grant, many might wonder why Mr Ferguson should be a beneficiary of this largesse, when many hard- working businessmen without his pedigree are starved of support to get businesses going. I am certainly not impressed, nor will the majority of taxpayers be."

A spokesman for Clyde Executive Charters said: "It was cannabis but it was years ago. He feels he has paid for it and life moves on."