More than £135,000 has been confiscated from drug dealer caught after a police operation in Aberdeen.
Peter Walters, 32, was arrested at 8 Skene House, a complex of serviced apartments in the city’s Whitehall Place in October 2013.
He was found standing in front of a table containing £32,000 worth of cocaine along with scales, bulking agent and other paraphernalia used to prepare drugs.
The High Court in Edinburgh yesterday ordered that Walters should forfeit £135,829. His case was one of five in which nearly £1.5million was seized under the Scottish Government’s CashBack programme, where criminal assets are seized to be use for community projects.
Other confiscation orders involved Michael Voudouri, Alan Gardner, Margaret Paterson and Robert Munro.
Voudouri was made subject of a confiscation order for £207,339, after pleading guilty in October 2012 to laundering a total of £11.6 million through foreign and domestic banks, company accounts and individuals between 2001 and 2004.
After his plea, he failed to appear for sentencing and fled to Cyprus. He was extradited last year and sentenced to a total of 11 years and six months for both the money laundering and for failing to appear for sentence.
The Crown Office said today’s order represents the entirety of his available assets, but it can be amended if he comes into further assets in the future.
Gardner will be forced to pay £35,454 after he pleaded guilty to involvement in the supply of heroin.
More than £1million was seized from Paterson and Munro for a series of offences stretching back over a decade fore their part in running a brothel, money laundering and living off the earnings of prostitution.
Lindsey Miller, Procurator Fiscal for Organised Crime and Counter Terrorism, said: “Today we have removed a vast amount of criminal earnings from organised crime groups operating right across Scotland.
“These cases show the tenacity of law enforcement and prosecutors in pursuing the thing that is most important to criminals – their money.”