By Kieran Webster,Norman Silvester
Copyright glasgowlive
The arrest of five major Scottish crime figures in Dubai, including Glasgow’s Ross McGill, will have caused paranoia in the country’s underworld leading to a potentially violent power struggle as new leaders emerge, according to a former top cop.
It is understood that McGill, 31, Lyons crime family boss Steven Lyons, 44, and convicted drug dealer Stephen Jamieson, 43, are among those detained on Tuesday morning following a crackdown on serious and organised crime in the UAE city.
Lyons associate Steven Larwood and a pal of McGill’s are believed to be the ones held, reports the Daily Record.
So far this year, McGill is said to have orchestrated a number of fire bombings and other attacks on properties linked to Edinburgh cocaine baron Mark Richardson and members of the Daniel crime family after he was allegedly ropped off in a £500,000 cocaine deal.
Former Director General of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, Graeme Pearson, believes other crime family members will be wondering if they are next and how the police are gathering their information.
He said: “There will be a very grave sense of paranoia affecting all the groups because people have been attacked who they haven’t previously anticipated could be attacked and people have been locked up who were previously seen as untouchable.
“People on either side will be slightly desperate just now because so many of the significant people have been arrested and that means the whole place is in chaos when it comes to who does what and when and who is authorised to do it.”
Pearson says the new wave of gangsters may be names that are not currently known or people who are existing members of the Lyons and Daniel crime families. The Lyons and Daniel’s have been at war for the last 25 years for control of the city’s drugs trade.
Mr Pearson added: “There will be people who aren’t particularly well known, who don’t have direct connections to either family groupings who are well organised, probably have a UK and Europe footing and they will be well enough organised to step in to any void that will be created.
“They will be significant and powerful enough to defend their new patch.
“I have no doubt there will elements within the Lyons and the Daniels families – lieutenants – who will also seek to reinforce their own positions.
“They are not sitting back watching this with interest. They will be gearing up to take as much of it as they can.”
The former top cop says the emergence of the new faces on the crime scene to fill the vacuum created by Tuesdays arrests will post a major challenge for the authorities.
He added: “A lot of work is going to have to be done by intelligence, Police Scotland, the National Crime Agency and even the security services because the presence of all these new groupings are a real threat to the nation and the communities that make up the nation.”
Graeme Pearson believes that the Daniel crime family will be looking to consolidate their own power.
He added: “They will try and at least maintain what they have currently got and if they can they will try and grow because they have the connections to supply.. “They have also got a group of people around them who are pretty keen to engage in violence. “There is no doubt they will also see an opportunity”
Mr Pearson says further gangland violence is also a possibility. He said: “With each of the arrests that have taken place there is extended family members who will be aggrieved and suspect their relatives has been stuck in by somebody giving information and they will want to pay back”
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It was reported that senior Daniel family member Steven “Bonzo” Daniel held a three-hour meeting at the Paisley offices of wealthy taxi firm owner Steven Malcolm. Daniel is the nephew of late crime boss Jamie Daniel who died from cancer in 2016.
His home and those of his mum Annette, 63, and two other family members been firebombed during the the recent violence attributed to former Rangers Union Bear leader McGill.
In May 2017 after attending a Rangers game with Malcolm, he was chased through the streets of Glasgow before being attacked with a cleaver, hammer and other weapons after his car crashed into a pole. Six Lyons gang members were found guilty at the High Court in Glasgow in 2019 of attempted murder and sentenced to a total of 104 years..
The violence linked to Ross McGill has been carried out by a sinister shadowy group called Tamo Junto which he is said to have set up. They have been posting videos of the firebombings online with music and sinister spoken warnings.
The Police Scotland Operation Portaledge investigation into the attacks has so far resulted in 57 arrests. In May, senior Lyons gang figures Ross Monaghan, 43, and Eddie Lyons Jr, 46, were shot dead in a Spanish bar. But Police Scotland have said it was not linked to the recent gang war.
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