After 40 years in the lifting business, the last year of Jim Moig and Bob McKay’s working lives should have been a time to celebrate and reflect on a job well done.
But instead they claim their final months with Global Lifting Services Ltd – a company they started from scratch and built into a multimillion-pound empire – were ruined after the Melville brothers offered to buy them out.
The deal included keeping more than £100,000 of their own money in the business for 12 months at the Melvilles’ request, a sum the business partners had shrewdly invested over the years.
But almost three years on, Mr Moig and Mr McKay are still out of pocket, and do not expect to see their money again.
The pair launched legal action in 2012 when they still had not received what they were due, and have since spent thousands of pounds on legal fees taking the Melvilles through the courts.
An out-of-court settlement was recently agreed with Stuart, who they are hopeful will pay up.
But in a strikingly similar case to that of the Press and Journal, sheriff’s officers cannot find Calum to serve him his bill.
“As soon as we walked out of Global Lifting, we both said to each other ‘we’re never going to see that money again’,” said Mr Moig.
“It would have been the easiest thing in the world to walk away and write the money off – it wouldn’t have ended up costing us so much.
“But why should someone get away with that?”
Mr McKay and Mr Moig have known the Melville brothers since they were teenagers after they came to work for them at Kennedy Lifting.
“I genuinely liked Calum in the early days. I thought he was a nice lad,” said Mr Moig.
The young Melvilles worked as testing engineers until their father, Alistair, started up his own rival company and took his sons on board.
Over the years, the brothers rose through the ranks and were eventually named two of the richest men in Scotland.
One day – out of the blue – Calum phoned Mr Moig asking if they were interested in selling their business to them.
“I went out to his house and he said he wanted the deal done quickly – no due diligence and that they would pay us in cash,” he said.
Mr McKay said: “We were looking to sell anyway. We were ready.
“They were chasing us and chasing us and chasing us to get the deal signed.
“Everything had to be done at 100mph.”
But it emerged the brothers were in no position to buy the company because of sanctions placed on them by Cosalt following their suspension.
“Calum’s the type of guy that can make you believe anything – he could charm the birds out the trees,” said Mr McKay.
“He said there was no possible way he could have done anything wrong.
“At the time, his cash was as good as anyone’s. We thought ‘we’ll listen to him’, and that’s exactly what we did.”
A deal was put in place for the business partners to hand over their company as soon as possible.
But during the year it took to change hands, they claimed that events in the Melvilles’ lives started impacting on Global Lifting.
Mr Moig and Mr McKay had considered staying on after the business was officially signed over, and were offered an attractive package to stay.
But they decided not to as that final year had been the “unhappiest” of their business lives.
“We just wanted out of the place,” said Mr Moig.
“The day they officially took the business over, we were out of there the same day.”
Mr McKay said: “Neither of us were happy leaving the situation the way we did, but unfortunately that was how far it had gone.
“It was a sad ending. We built our business up from nothing, just the two of us.”
Calum later re-branded the company as Global Integrated Services, which was acquired by oil millionaire Ian Suttie’s First Time Group in late 2013.
So far, Mr Moig and Mr McKay have received just one instalment of the £100,000 they were due back, and have never received a penny since.
The last they heard from Calum’s lawyers was that he could potentially pay them back in instalments.
“But we never heard another word,” said Mr McKay.
“He has no intention of paying us.”
Mr Moig added: “In our own minds we had written the money off, but we thought ‘why should he get off with it?’.
“How can such a well known man be able to hide?
“We know we’re not going to get the money back, but we wanted to take him to task.
“He can’t go through life doing this to people.”