Drug smuggler invest in kilt business

Apr 27 2008 By Norman Silvester

Exclusive Healy Buys Into Tartan Firm

DRUGS kingpin John Healy built a £4million fortune trafficking using minibuses packed with kids on football trips as a front.

Today, the Sunday Mail can reveal he is using his dirty money to get his claws in a legitimate business selling KILTS.

John Healy, 50, has invested in respectable family firm Douglas Alexander Kiltmakers.

He also has links to a new children's football camp business - despite being jailed for using youth teams to smuggle drugs.

Healy and his late brother-in-law, crime lord Tam "The Licensee" McGraw, brought hauls to Scotland from Spain by hiding them in the squads' minibuses.

Healy was jailed for the racket in 1998 after a four-year investigation that involved 6600 phone calls being analysed. He was sentenced to 10 years but served five.

McGraw - who died of a heart attack last year aged 54 - walked free.

Dad-of-three Healy, of Cathcart, Glasgow, is listed on the famous kiltmakers' official documents as a company director.

He is a regular visitor to their store in Glasgow's St Enoch Square and their east end factory.

Last June, he was appointed as a director of The Soccercamp Company, based in Aberfoyle, Perthshire, but resigned eight months later.

The firm has bought Inchrie Castle Hotel, formerly the Covenanter's Inn, in the village.

A Sunday Mail investigator posing as a dad looking for a youth football camp phoned the hotel last week.

They said: "I know John. His name comes up nowand again but he's nothing to do with Soccercamp, nothing to do with the business."

Douglas Alexander's store said he would not be back until tomorrow.

We were later contacted by an anonymous man claiming to represent Healy. He said he would get back in touch but failed to.

Healy ran a criminal empire for 20 years. The Sunday Mail's Crime Inc probe in 2003 ranked him eighth in the crook rich list with a £4million fortune.

In 1999 he handed over £250,000 under proceeds of crime laws.

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