Top political donors, a Labour lord and Scottish football hero Ally McCoist have been among secret owners of a tax haven firm behind an elite Scottish golf club, The Ferret can reveal.
The 660-acre private Loch Lomond Golf Club hosted the Scottish Open and boasts a Georgian mansion, a spa within a historic walled garden, and dramatic lochside views to Ben Lomond.
But the club is open only to members who can join on a strict invite-only policy, and the entry fees – estimated at well over £100,000 today – mean the luxury is open only to a wealthy few.
As the club is ultimately owned and operated by a firm incorporated in the Cayman Islands, the names of its true owners are allowed to stay hidden due to secrecy provisions in the Caribbean tax haven.
But the once-secret shareholders of years past are named in leaked documents. They include Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ biggest donor ahead of the last general election, Robin MacGeachy, top footballers and senior bankers.
The leaked Paradise Papers files were obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and shared with The Ferret.
Financial transparency would guarantee that, at a time when the UK is struggling, the Treasury’s coffers are as full as possible.
Tom Brake, Unlock Democracy
One 2014 document from an offshore law firm shows that the Cayman entity, Loch Lomond Members Golf Club Limited, received nearly £50m from shareholders, members, and applicant members over just a few years.
There is no suggestion of tax abuse from the company, its shareholders or club members.
But a tax expert said tax avoidance and secrecy were the “two distinctive advantages” allowed by the club’s Cayman Islands ownership, with neither “in the public interest for UK taxpayers”.
The revelations prompted renewed calls from campaigners for the UK Government to force British overseas territories like the Caymans to introduce a public register of the beneficial owners behind companies incorporated there.
Billionaires, bankers and businessmen
Among the club’s more than 500 named shareholders as of 2014 were the millionaire Labour lord and party donor, Baron Willie Haughey, billionaire Perthshire landowner Moshin Mohammed Mahdi Al Tajir, and the late billionaire motor magnate Arnold Clark.
Businessman Robin MacGeachy is a current director of the club. Since 2014, companies owned by MacGeachy – Peak Scientific, Dusty TLP, and Treeman Rockafella – have given nearly £2.7m to the Conservatives, Labour, and the Lib Dems.
The firms were both Scottish Labour and the Scottish Liberal Democrats’ biggest donors ahead of the last general election, handing over £700,000 and £710,000 respectively.
The contributions represented more than a third of Labour’s donations and more than a half of the Lib Dems’ in the three years preceding the 2024 general election, according to analysis of donations records by The Ferret.
Among top sportsmen on the shareholder list were footballers Ally McCoist, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, cricket coach Paul Collingwood, former Manchester United director Roy Gardner, and golfer Gordon Sherry.
Senior bankers were well represented among shareholders. Barclays executives included current president, Stephen Dainton, former director of the bank’s investment arm, John Porter, and ex-advisory board member of its wealth management division, Stuart Counsell.
Counsell was also deputy chief executive of Deloitte. Other shareholders linked to the accounting giant were then-vice chair Cahal Dowds, and former partner Donald Campbell.
Martin Gilbert, the former chair of Scottish Golf, current chair of and Revolut, and co-founder and former head of Aberdeen Asset Management, which later merged with Standard Life, also featured.
So too did Fahad Al-Rajaan, who, in 2020, was accused of embezzling around £680m from Kuwait’s state pension fund before fleeing to London, where he lived until his death in 2022.
Construction and housebuilding heads on the list included the former managing director and chairman of Ogilvie, Phil McEwan, the owner of East Renfrewshire-based Westpoint Homes, Stephen Cullis, and Stewart Milne, whose Aberdeen building firm collapsed this year.
They were joined by real estate veteran Roger Orf, who is now a board member of the Centre for Policy Studies, a think-tank founded by Margaret Thatcher.
The public should be able to expect that the government “does the right thing and forces necessary transparency, regardless of links to party donors.”
Emma Roddick MSP, SNP
Supermarket boss shareholders on the list were former Tesco chair, David Reid, and ex-Tesco and Morrisons chief Andy Higginson, who became a director of the golf club in 2019. Higginson also now chairs JD Sports and the British Retail Consortium trade body.
Rodney Aldridge, who founded Capita, a controversial outsourcing firm used by the UK Government, was named, as was Ian Robinson, the former chief executive of Scottish Power and past chairman of the Scottish Government’s investment arm, Scottish Enterprise.
Member buyout and shareholdings
Members reportedly purchased the club in the early 2010s after it was put up for sale. The club said the member buyout was to retain “exclusivity”. But it has run up losses of around £16m, staying in the red – and therefore not liable for corporation tax – in 12 of the 14 years since the buyout, according to its UK accounts.
Leaked documents show that 100 shares in the Cayman entity were assigned to new and existing members.
Ian Robinson said he was surprised to have been a listed shareholder, having successfully applied for membership pre-buyout.
“The only activity I ever engaged in at the club was playing golf!,” he told The Ferret. “I resigned as a member – not a shareholder! – around 10 years later as I was not able to play as often as I wanted.”
Other members apparently opted for additional share-buying options, some of which were named after golf scores. A birdie membership cost £50,000, an eagle £100,000, and an albatross £150,000. Each came with shares unique to the membership type.
The top shareholder listed in the 2014 document was private equity boss and director of the golf club, John Burgess, who had bought nearly £4m in shares.
In 2019, Burgess was joined as a director by MacGeachy, who was also a listed shareholder of the Cayman parent firm in 2014. According to the firm’s latest accounts, all directors own shares in the offshore entity.
‘Avoidance’ and secrecy
Revelations that Labour donor MacGeachy and other notable party figures have had links to the tax haven-owned club come at a time when the UK Government is under pressure to ensure that overseas territories introduce public registers of the beneficial owners behind companies.
The Caymans, British Virgin Islands and Bermuda – which the government has legal and constitutional responsibility for – are the world’s top tax havens and allow for an estimated £63bn in tax avoidance, according to the Tax Justice Network’s latest assessment.
Campaigners and MSPs said the golf club’s offshore ownership exemplified the need for the government to press overseas territories for transparency measures.
“A parent company located in the Cayman Islands offers two distinctive advantages for Loch Lomond Golf Club – the first is its tax haven status for avoidance purposes, the other is the secrecy it affords its beneficial owners wanting to hide from transparency and scrutiny,” said Claire Aston, a tax policy expert and director of TaxWatch.
“Neither is in the public interest for UK taxpayers and the case shows the need for public registers of beneficial ownership to be implemented by the British overseas territories and Crown Dependencies”.
Tom Brake, the former Lib Dem MP and director of campaign group Unlock Democracy echoed Aston’s point. “It’s high time the UK government exerted greater pressure on the Cayman Islands and others to introduce public registers of ownership,” he said.
“Financial transparency would guarantee that, at a time when the UK is struggling, the Treasury’s coffers are as full as possible.”
SNP MSP, Emma Roddick said the measures would help to “prevent tax avoidance by companies operating here in Scotland”. The public should be able to expect that the government “does the right thing and forces necessary transparency, regardless of links to party donors,” she added.
The Scottish Greens’ spokesperson for social justice, Maggie Chapman MSP, agreed. She argued that “individuals and organisations who do choose to squirrel away their lions’ share of wealth offshore must be held accountable publicly”.
Chapman added: “The UK Labour Government must close these loopholes for the benefit of everyone in society, rather than cosying up to their wealthy donors.”
The Ferret contacted every individual named in this article via their associated companies. Loch Lomond Golf Club, Scottish Labour, the Scottish Lib Dems and the UK Government did not respond to requests to comment.
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Main image: Richard Johnson
