LONDON (UK) – The Scottish parliament on Wednesday dismissing a call for the government to conduct an investigation into how Donald Trump had the funds for his purchase of two golf courses in Scotland, a request dismissed as “pathetic” by one of the Trump’s sons.
The Scottish Green Party brought forward a motion asking ministers to request an “unexplained wealth order” (UWO) against Trump, with regard to his acquisition of the golf courses and resorts in north and west Scotland. It was defeated by a vote of 89 to 32.
The party’s co-leader Patrick Harvie said there has been concerns for long about Trump’s financial conduct, describing the ex-president as “an untrustworthy dishonest, racist, conspiracy theorist” with whom Scotland should never have associated.
Harvie said, “Maybe some people think he should just go back to being the global joke that he was before he became a global threat. But people who abused political office, need to be held accountable.”
Trump’s son Eric, the executive vice president of The Trump Organization, said politicians’ focus should be on saving lives and starting businesses again.
“Patrick Harvie is nothing more than a national embarrassment with his pathetic antics that only serve himself and his political agenda,” Eric Trump said in a statement before the vote.
Humza Yousaf, the Scottish justice minister, said Donald Trump was a “deplorable individual” but it was not the duty of politicians to incite such investigations.
Britain had launched UWOs in 2018 so as to extend help to authorities for targetting the illicit wealth of foreign officials, which were suspected to be of corruption and those involved in serious crimes.
Scottish ministers are vested with the power to ask that a UWO be ordered by the Court of Session, Scotland’s top civil court.
However, the orders have only been put to used sparingly by the National Crime Agency (NCA), which deals with serious crime, proving a legally difficult tool to wield.
“If we have evidence that there were illicit funds involved … we could look at one,” a spokesman for the NCA said regarding the possibility of it seeking a UWO against the former US president.
The Trump Organization owns the Trump International Golf Links near Aberdeen and the Trump Turnberry resort south of Glasgow.