Metals firm handed £586m Scottish Government support package facing court bankruptcy fight
dailyrecord.co.ukA metals firm that was handed a £586million Scottish Government support package to buy a Highland smelter is facing a court bankruptcy fight.
Taxpayers could be hit with crippling losses if businessman Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance goes under as a result of the controversial deal signed by SNP ministers.
The company, given massive state support to buy metal and power plants in Lanarkshire and Fort William, is now at the centre of a fraud investigation and it could be liquidated if it loses a court battle with creditors.The Sunday Mail revealed last year that then rural economy secretary Fergus Ewing could have broken conduct rules by attending a dinner with Gupta at a top Glasgow restaurant.He dined with no officials present and failed to have notes taken – a strict rule included in the ministerial code when on government business.It came after Ewing struck a complex financial deal to allow GFG to buy a smelter in Lochaber, near Fort William, and a Highlands hydro plant from Rio Tinto in 2016.The size of the financial guarantee given by the Scottish Government to facilitate the purchase going ahead was originally about £360million of public money but it later ballooned to £586million.Opposition politicians reacted with fury to news of the bankruptcy proceedings and demanded that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon “comes clean” over the decision to risk taxpayers’ cash on GFG.Labour finance spokesman Daniel Johnson MSP said: “It is the earnings of hard-working taxpayers that are at risk because of the SNP’s agreement with GFG.“We have seen Fraud Office raids, investigations and now liquidation proceedings but we are still no clearer what assessment the SNP Government made before ploughing billions of
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