One of Scotland’s richest men has been named and shamed as a deliberate tax cheat, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
Taxi tycoon Steven Malcolm and his Glasgow Private Hire firm, which has had millions in council contracts, were outed by HMRC over bills totalling £316,000.
The taxman said both were “deliberate tax defaulters” between 2013 and 2019 in a list published on Wednesday.
The controversial businessman, who has been associated with organised crime figures, was fined £32,141 by the taxman over an unpaid bill of £76,526.
Glasgow Private Hire Ltd – which Malcolm has been a director of since its launch in 1999 – was fined £61,544 over an unpaid bill of £146,535.
During the six-year period of unpaid tax, Glasgow Private Hire was awarded a share of at least £62million in lucrative contracts to provide transport for Glasgow City Council and other public bodies including the prison service, Scottish Government, Scottish Courts Service, housing associations and universities across Glasgow.
And since 2017 other private hire firms run by Malcolm have been awarded contracts worth at least £6.2million.
The tax scandal has led to calls for local authorities to review multi-million-pound public contracts given to his taxi companies.
Scottish Conservative shadow community safety minister Russell Findlay MSP said: “Hard-working Scots who pay their taxes will rightly question how any tax defaulter is able to receive lucrative public sector contracts.
“While it is reassuring to see HMRC recovering tax debts and publicly naming those responsible, public bodies must ensure not a penny of taxpayers’ cash should end up enriching those who fail to pay what they owe.”
Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has called for an immediate review of contracts given to Malcolm’s other firms.
He said: “Public contracts of any kind should only be given to individuals and companies who operate in a fit and proper way. These revelations would certainly call that into question here.
“We need to be sure that companies who benefit from taxpayers’ cash are paying their way when it comes to tax themselves.”
HMRC publishes a list of what it refers to as “tax cheats” every three months after often long-running investigations into the financial affairs of an individual or business.
The taxman said those named as “deliberate tax defaulters” are given ample opportunity to correct the errors before penalties are issued and they appear on the published list.
Those named publicly have either “committed VAT or excise wrongdoing”, “deliberately provided one or more inaccurate documents” or “failed to comply with an HMRC obligation”.
Investigators say details will not be published if the taxpayer “has provided a full and immediate disclosure when HMRC starts to investigate or prior to any investigation” and does not name and shame those penalised “due to the person’s careless, rather than
deliberate, behaviour”.
Malcolm, also known as The Fat Controller, owned 900 of the 1100 shares in Glasgow Private Hire before the company merged with Hampden Cars and Southside Radio Cars to form GlasGo Cabs in 2021.
The new firm is run by Hampden Cars boss Stephen Conley, whose plush Newlands home was sprayed with bullets in 2006 in what was described as a mini cab “turf war”.
Malcolm has relinquished his majority stake in Glasgow Private Hire since the merger but was in control of it at the time the tax anomalies occurred and is still listed on Companies House as a director.
When contacted, a representative for Malcolm said the tax had been paid.
She said: “When the demand for payment was made, it was there-after paid within the agreed timescale – i.e. it was paid on time.”
Malcolm, who owns a £9million home next to the Gleneagles five-star hotel and golf complex in Perthshire, has previously tried to distance himself from links to Scotland’s criminal underworld.
Convicted fraudster Barry Hughes previously occupied a house in Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, owned by the taxi boss. Another of his properties, a £260,000 pad in Crookston, Glasgow, was also home to a convicted drug baron.
Malcolm has also been associated with Steven “Bonzo” Daniel – of the Daniel crime family – inviting him to watch a Rangers match at his Ibrox hospitality suite just hours before the gangster was brutalised with a machete in 2017.
In July that year, two months after the attack, Malcolm bought KeyCars, a company linked to Daniel.
The transaction happened three years after we photographed Malcolm leaving his Glasgow Private Hire HQ with Daniel and a convicted drug dealer.
As well as the millions of contracts handed to Glasgow Private Hire, the Sunday Mail can reveal Malcolm’s other two taxi firms – Penny Cars and Renfrewshire Cab Co – have also been given a share of millions in public contracts by councils.
North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire councils have handed the two firms dozens of contracts to provide transport for disabled children, bring meals to residents and for taxi services.
In January this year Renfrewshire Cab Co was given a share of £4million by Renfrewshire Council for ad hoc taxi services and to take disabled children to and from school, while Penny Cars has been handed more than £2.2million by North Lanarkshire Council since 2017 to bring pensioners to day centres, take disabled children to school and provide general taxi services for the council. In 2021 Penny Cars was given a share of £2.1million for “scheduled and ad hoc taxi services”.
The HMRC said the department was “committed to making sure people pay the tax they owe” and they would name and shame “those penalised under civil procedures for deliberately defaulting on certain tax obligations”.
North Lanarkshire Council said: “All contractual arrangements which the council has in place for the delivery of services are subject to review, particularly in the event any pertinent new information is made available to us.”
Renfrewshire Council said: “We evaluate tenders for public contracts in line with our standing orders and national procurement regulations. Where there is a suggestion of a potential issue with a contract, we would investigate and consider an appropriate course of action.”
