In the years leading up to the end of the 17th Century, Scotland’s leaders, bankers and landowners had bled and corrupted the nation to such an extent that it was completely bankrupt, driven by greed, fraud and its people subjugated to a life of endless poverty and injustice at the hands of crooked lawyers, judges and the ruling Nobility.

The Act of Union 1701 was not a merger of equals, it was designed to rescue Scotland from itself.

Fast forward to the present day and the old adage of power corrupts stands as true now as it did 300 years ago. With a devolved parliament in Edinburgh the stories of corruption, lies, fraud and worse ebb out every day, but more injurious than politicians stand the Scottish legal system, which is now without doubt rotten to the core and at the very highest levels.

It is a system that no longer serves the people, if it ever truly did, the sham of respectability has now been stripped away completely to expose the lengths to which the corrupt will go to protect the corrupt within the legal system and the police. With the introduction of a single police force in Scotland this situation is likely to get worse rather than better.

At the centre of this barrel of rotting fish lies the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, COPFS. Exposed by the Scottish Law Reporter earlier this week as maintaining a secret unaudited slush fund of public money used to pay for legal advice, and private legal representation for its own members of staff who have been charged with criminal offences or who have become involved in civil legal disputes.

The Scottish Law Reporter said this week:

Evidence emerges of a secret slush fund at Lord Advocate’s Crown Office. SCOTLAND’S Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) has today been accused of operating a secret, unaudited “slush fund of public money” used to pay for legal advice, and private legal representation for its own members of staff who have been charged with criminal offences or who have become involved in civil legal disputes.

The fund, which legal insiders claim is buried deep in the budget for the Crown Office, is rumoured to have paid out millions of pounds over its existence in cases involving its own staff. There are also suggestions the fund has been used to PAY-OFF ‘media friendly’ law firms to keep headlines involving criminal charges against COPFS staff out of the press and that the fund may have been used “to purchase testimony” from witnesses”.

The claims come after the Crown Office refused to respond to Freedom of Information requests made by journalists investigating leaks that “a substantial fund which is not subject to external audit or accountability”, is maintained by prosecutors to pay huge sums relating to legal costs of their colleagues caught up in scandals, criminal charges and civil legal actions.

Legal insiders claim the fund, which is bankrolled by the Scottish Government, has been operating on an almost “cash-in-hand basis” with several high profile law firms receiving large sums of money for representing Crown Office personnel up to the most senior rank in the organisation.

This campaign you may recall has consistently been denied information by COPFS over whether public or private funds were used to prosecute Robert Green. I refer you to documentation that shows that public funds were used to prosecute what was a private civil case by Sherriff Buchanan against Robert Green which we brought to light in November 2011 during Robert Green’s trial. At the time we published this information members of this campaign team were lambasted and called liars.

We have in our possession documentation to prove that Robert Green was arrested for ‘breach of an interdict’ raised privately by Sherriff Buchanan in order to silence him in his support for Hollie Greig, only for Grampian Police to discover that the interdict had never been served. In order to cover up this false arrest Grampian Police did two things, firstly the interdict was served on Green in the police station custody suite seven hours after his arrest, secondly the charges were changed 24 hours into Robert Green’s detention to ‘breach of the peace’, after Levy & McRae had issued instructions to Simpson & Marwick on behalf of the then Procurator Fiscal, Elish Angiolini, which we now have reason to believe was funded via this slush fund.

Again, this from the Scottish Law Reporter:

One case which has brought the issue of this secret fund into focus is that of a case involving legal action taken by the previous Lord Advocate, now Dame Elish Angiolini DBE QC (born McPhilomy) over a campaign asking for an investigation into abuse against vulnerable people in the Aberdeen area, and allegations of a paedophile gang rumoured to contain members of Scotland’s judiciary.

Groups of law journalists and media publications had sought to use Freedom of Information laws to establish whether the Crown Office did pay for legal representation of Dame Angiolini (born McPhilomy)in the case of Robert Green, a journalist & anti-abuse campaigner who was jailed for six months on a breach of the peace charge, at a cost to taxpayers of around ONE MILLION POUNDS after he was found guilty of handing out leaflets asking for an investigation into allegations of sexual abuse against a downs syndrome victim, Hollie Greig.

The Crown Office refused to disclose any information in response to FOI requests involving Angiolini, and in some cases, enacted a media boycott of certain publications in retaliation for publishing material and allegations connected with the case involving Angiolini.

As with all major cases of corruption and wrongdoing, sooner or later the truth will be revealed, it always does. HDJ would like to thank the Scottish Law Reporter for its unwavering efforts to uncover such wrongdoing within the Scottish legal system, and for bringing it into the public domain.

As each day passes this campaign collects and collates more detailed information to prove that someone in a position of power believes that it is worth spending millions of taxpayers pounds to discredit and cover-up the Hollie Greig story, and to keep it out of the mainstream media. That is an awful lot of time, effort and money to disproportionately attempt to silence a Downs Syndrome woman and her allegedly mentally ill mother.

As with the Jimmy Savile story, so far we have only scratched the surface. We wonder whether there are still enough people in positions of trust in Scotland who are of of an honest disposition to warrant the undoing of the Act of Union.

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