Dear readers, how did you spend your weekends? Get out your tiny violins, because Calum and Robbie were both recovering from pastry-induced food comas. Calum did manage to flit down the Firth of Clyde to take in the air. Robbie mustered the energy for a Southside half pint stout tour (best stout in the city, let us know in the comments), and a jaunt to a decidedly sunnier Edinburgh yesterday.
Onto your briefing.
Glasgow in Brief
🦁 “Bali bust is just the start,” so goes the front page splash of last week’s Digger, which seems to sum up the fallout from Steven Lyons’ arrest at the end of last month. Detectives have now made 15 arrests in an effort to dismantle the Lyons organised crime group. Operation Armorum, a Spanish Civil Guard investigation, has seen arrests in Spain, Scotland, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates. The three-year investigation in collaboration with Police Scotland has seen electronic devices, large sums of cash, documents, watches and cryptocurrency seized. Is the end nigh, or are proclamations of the demise of the Lyons premature?
A former senior police officer, Martin Gallagher, labelled the arrest a “decapitation” on the BBC’s Scotcast podcast, but warned it could lead to a new wave of violence as the vacuum left in his wake is filled. Lyons’ arrest, according to reports in the Sun, is linked to Operation Whitewall, the international investigation into the Kinahan organised crime group’s financial operations — which led to Kinahan banker Johnny Morrissey’s arrest in 2022. We previously reported on his Glaswegian wife’s company, Nero Drinks; Morrissey was accused of using the company to camouflage the Kinahans’ activities. Police estimate the Lyons have laundered more than £26 million, using several firms to wash the cash, including a food and drinks firm and a rental car company.
Gallagher told Scotcast that the Daniel crime group and Edinburgh gangster Mark Richardson were the most likely candidates to fill the void as the Lyons empire is pulled apart by international law enforcement. What’s noteworthy here is ex-officers like Gallagher seem quick to write off Lyons now that he’s awaiting extradition to Spain on a double murder charge. Yet Richardson himself has been in jail since 2018, and nonetheless appears to be a key figure in the recent conflagration of violence. He has continued to operate while in jail, despite being moved between prisons. He is expected to be subject to a Serious Crime Prevention Order upon his release this year. Meanwhile, the violence shows no sign of letting up, with a firebombing at the infamous Lambhill garage where Lyons’ cousin was murdered, and a stabbing in Musselburgh only hours apart.
💰 We’ve been taking a closer look at the finances of former Labour and now-independent East Kilbride and Strathaven MP Joani Reid prior to allegations her husband is a Chinese spy. (Not to mention two separate incidents of inappropriate behaviour with naval officers at the Faslane nuclear submarine base, leading to Reid’s departure from the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme.)
Reid appears to have profited handsomely from her political consultancy, Reid Strategy Ltd. Set up in 2019, it was wound up in August 2024 after she was elected MP. Reid pocketed a tidy £380,000 in total from the venture by March 2025. Her husband, David Taylor, has also done well out of lobbying, netting a total of £810,000 from his company Moblake, which wound down in 2024 after six years. His current venture, Earthcott Ltd has been going for five years and has made cumulative profits of at least £724,000. In Reid’s financial disclosures, she divulged in August 2024 that she has “Family members engaged in lobbying the public sector on behalf of a third party or client”. The family member, of course, is Taylor. The company? Earthcott Ltd. In March of this year, Reid’s financial disclosures show a donation of £2,400 received on 12 February from a certain Earthcott Ltd for “media training”.
Meanwhile, Reid will be nervously awaiting the results of the investigation into her husband, who stands accused of assisting a foreign intelligence service under section three of the National Security Act.
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