Russell Findlay - @RussellFindlay1

A BILLIONAIRE businessman, aristocrats and city slickers have poured £40million into Hampden & Co — the first new bank in Scotland in 30 years. Its Edinburgh HQ is yards from Nicola Sturgeon’s Bute House residence. But there are fears a rampant SNP and talk of another indy poll could force its unionist shareholders to demand a move south. Here RUSSELL FINDLAY finds out what the Hampden Roar is with the capital’s new finance house. SCOTLAND’S new elite bank is set to open its doors to some of the UK’s wealthiest people. But already there are fears that prestigious Hampden & Co may be forced by shareholders to move its business south — over fears of SNP tax rises. The private bank’s headquarters in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, are just a few doors away from Nats First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s Bute House residence. However, many of Hampden’s super-rich backers are staunch unionists who fear their savings may be hit by a rampant SNP push for full fisc...

A ROGUE landlord who fled Scotland after ripping off students has become a global vice king with brothels generating a £20million fortune. David Archer, 53, preyed on impoverished foreign women who he trafficked into the UK and forced to work in the sex industry. He kept one terrified victim locked in his £1.3million home where he used CCTV to monitor inside his four dingy brothels across London. And he sexually assaulted other women while taking explicit photos of them for online adverts. Police warned that the "controlling and manipulative" Glasgow pimp thought he was "untouchable" with links to organised crime gangs in Romania, Brazil and Ireland . A six-month probe uncovered Archer's £16million property empire, including the Travel Inn in Forest Gate which he bought for £1.5million. On the same street, he also owned a three-bedroom house which he illegally converted into 24 bedrooms - each used to sell sex. Another brothel, the Excel hotel in P...

PROPPED up in bed with a book and cup of tea, my slow start to the Christmas holidays was disturbed by the chime of the doorbell. As my ten-year-old daughter dozed upstairs, I opened the front door to the unremarkable sight of a postman who produced a Royal Mail delivery card with a mumbled instruction for me to sign. Bare-footed and in pyjamas, I began to scrawl my name when a shock of liquid splashed onto my face and right eye. The postman lunged into the hall with a knife in hand, but in the melee he dropped the blade. My instincts took over and I wrestled him back outside where we crashed down hard onto the driveway. My daughter appeared, momentarily froze in confused terror, then dashed to neighbours who called 999. By now, I was on top and jabbed punches as the 'postman' struggled to escape by shedding his Royal Mail jacket and bag. My face was stinging from the liquid and I felt it burning my flesh close to my eye. I later learned it was sulphuric acid and...

The spluttering from within Edinburgh’s New Club is the sound of indignant judges. Scotland’s most senior beak, the £225,000-a-year lord president of the Court of Session, Lord Carloway, told a senior public sector salary review body last year of only eight applicants for a vacancy on the Court of Session bench. Yet the judicial PR machine has been peddling the claim that too many top lawyers have no interest in seeking such well-paid office. One reason cited is the impertinence of MSPs on Holyrood’s public petitions committee. For five years, these pipsqueaks have debated a proposed register of judicial interests which intends to shine light on their outside business, professional and financial affairs. A highlight was when the previous lord president twice snubbed Holyrood only to deliver a speech about judicial ethics in Qatar. These most recent dire rumblings about MSPs eroding judicial independence are disingenuous. After the 1707 Act of Union, a judicial aristoc...