A JUDICIAL inquiry into the notorious McKie fingerprint case is set to investigate claims that the cover-up over the affair was linked to fears it would scupper the Lockerbie prosecution.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that a full inquiry into the McKie affair has been given the go-ahead by new SNP ministers who have begun discussions about who should head up the potentially explosive probe.

Ex-ministers including Jim Wallace, Cathy Jamieson and former Lord Advocate Colin Boyd are almost certain to be called to give evidence.

But the inquiry is also likely to ask whether the case was dropped because it might have “tainted” the Scottish legal system during the Lockerbie case.

The revelations come as Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which crashed on Lockerbie, prepares to hear whether his case will be sent back to the appeal court at the end of this month. The bombing killed 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground.

Last year, former policewoman Shirley McKie received 750,000 in compensation after ministers admitted that fingerprint experts at the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) had made an “honest mistake” in wrongly identifying her as having been present at a murder scene.

Ministers had hoped the payment would draw a line under the affair, but there followed a welter of fresh revelations about the case, including claims by a senior police chief of a “cover-up” and “conspiracy”.

Despite this, ministers in the previous administration refused to hold a judicial inquiry, opting instead for a parliamentary inquiry.

SNP sources now say that Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill will “definitely” press ahead with a public inquiry once a suitable judge has been selected. This could take time, however, as there are concerns that no judge in Scotland would be able to carry out the task, which will require detailed scrutiny of the judicial system itself.

Sources have also confirmed the inquiry will not re-examine the print itself, and will start from the basis that it was not McKie’s.

The remit is likely to focus on why the mistake was made and on the alleged ‘cover-up’.

The Lockerbie link was made last year by two American fingerprint experts who claim they were told to “back off” from their criticisms of the McKie affair for fear it would tarnish the reputation of the Scottish legal system.

The warnings in 2001 came as Scottish prosecutors prepared the Lockerbie trial, a case of international importance.

David Grieve, a senior fingerprint expert at Illinois State Police, said last year: “I was asked not to mention anything about the [McKie] case and not to publicise it because we had to think about the higher goal, which was Lockerbie.”

The warnings came as serious questions were being asked about the SCRO’s handling of the McKie case.

A report by the former Assistant Chief Constable of Tayside Police, Jim Mackay, into the case had concluded that officials at the SCRO had taken a “criminal course of action” by “covering up” their mistakes.

The then Lord Advocate, Colin Boyd, decided not to prosecute anyone from the SCRO. He has always strenuously denied there was any link between this decision and the Lockerbie case.

The news that an inquiry will happen was welcomed by Shirley McKie’s father, Iain, last night.

“The starting point here needs to be, first of all, why did they make these mistakes? And then why were they prepared to keep it under wraps for 10 years.”

He added: “This case brings in Lockerbie, and that undoubtedly needs to be looked at.”

The public inquiry would also be able to summon some of the key police and Crown Office figures in the case, who were not brought before the parliamentary inquiry.

As with the inquiry into the Holyrood building project, it would also have full powers to pull all documents relating to the case which have not so far been published.

A spokesman for MacAskill said that ministers would be considering the content of the inquiry over the coming months. No decision is expected over the next few weeks.

The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission is expected to reach a verdict by the end of this month over whether or not the verdict in the Lockerbie case is unsafe. If they do so, then the entire case could be re-tried.

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http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1385

NORILSK, Russia: Last January, Mikhail Prokhorov, a 42-year-old Russian mining entrepreneur and a multibillionaire, celebrated the holidays in singular style: with dozens of business associates and an entourage of young Russian women at the exclusive ski resort of Courchevel in the French Alps.

Prokhorov - often called Russias most eligible bachelor - usually unwound at such blowout parties, which he once told an interviewer embody his philosophy of life. In Courchevel, the French police detained him for four days on suspicion of making prostitutes available to his guests.

The police released Prokhorov without filing any charges, but they identified him as a witness in their prostitution investigation.

In one of the more bizarre cases of an apparently forced sale of Russian assets, Prokhorovs festivities in Courchevel led to his agreement to sell his 26 percent stake in Norilsk Nickel, the worlds largest nickel producer. The buyer was Vladimir Potanin, his longtime business partner and a favorite of the Kremlin.

Prokhorov and Potanin bought a controlling stake in Norilsk, named for the Siberian city where it is located, for a scant $250 million during the hotly contested privatization of state-owned companies in the mid-1990s.

Today, Norilsk produces one-fifth of the worlds nickel, a key alloy in stainless steel, and has a market capitalization of $31.9 billion; its profits doubled last year, to $6 billion, buoyed by high demand for steel in China. Awash in cash, Norilsk in late June closed a deal to buy the Canadian mining company LionOre for $6.4 billion and already owns a controlling interest in Clearwater Mining in Montana.

In an interview on state television, Potanin said he ended his partnership with Prokhorov, who Forbes magazine estimates has a net worth of $13.5 billion, because of the embarrassing arrest. They have yet to complete the deal, but the partners said they would unwind their businesses before the end of the year, leaving Potanin in control of Norilsk. And who, ask some analysts in Moscow, controls Potanin?

“In Russia today, no serious deal can be made without approval from the Kremlin,” said Irina Yasina, a researcher at the Institute for the Economy in Transition, a research group led by a former prime minister, Yegor Gaidar. “A person like Potanin, without the agreement of the Kremlin, can do nothing.”

Under President Vladimir Putin, the Russian government is establishing vast state-owned holding companies in automobile and aircraft manufacturing, shipbuilding, nuclear power, diamonds, titanium and other industries. His economic model is sometimes compared with the state-owned “national champion” industries in France under Charles de Gaulle in the 1950s. The policy of forcing owners of strategic assets to sell their holdings has also been compared to recent nationalizations in Venezuela and other Latin American nations.

Rather than expropriating assets outright, the government of Putin has exploited minor legal infractions at the target companies to force sales. Either government-controlled companies, or companies run by men seen as loyal to the Kremlin, are the beneficiaries.

In 2003, for example, prosecutors went after Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chairman of Yukos Oil, then Russias largest private company, on accusations of tax evasion. Khodorkovsky was sent to a Siberian prison, and Yukos went bankrupt. The state company Rosneft later acquired most of the Yukos assets. Last fall, it was environmental infractions in pipeline construction that forced Royal Dutch Shell and Japanese partners to sell a controlling stake in their $22 billion Sakhalin II oil and gas development to Gazprom, the state gas monopoly.

Then, this June, BPs local joint venture, TNK-BP, sold its share of a huge gas development after regulators threatened to revoke the license because the field was developed too slowly, which was a technical violation of the terms of TNK-BPs license. Gazprom, again, was the beneficiary.

Coincidentally, Prokhorov and Potanin own a minority stake in that same BP gas field. Their 26 percent stake was not touched, perhaps because of Potanins close ties to Putin. But in the case of Norilsk, Prokhorovs arrest, analysts say, seems to have been a fortuitous accident that gave the Kremlin cover for exerting more control over this strategic metals company.

Prokhorov and Potanin both declined to be interviewed. But the end of their partnership is yet another milestone in how the Kremlin and a class of ambitious, enormously wealthy Russian businessmen known as oligarchs do business together.

“Property rights are very conditional in Russia, to this day,” said Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences who studies Russias business and political elite. The government lets big industrialists “exist only under conditions it considers acceptable,” she said, adding: “When the Kremlin considers a capitalist such as Prokhorov no longer acceptable, he is deprived of his property, by one means or another. Private business exists only by the grace of the state.”

Roger Federer today claimed his fifth straight Wimbledon title with a stunning five-set victory over Rafael Nadal, equalling the modern-day record of Bjorn Borg.

With Borg watching from the Royal Box on Centre Court, Federer was tested to the limit in an epic contest before sealing a 7-6, 4-6, 7-6, 2-6, 6-2 victory in three hours and 45 minutes. It was the Swiss star’s 54th consecutive victory on grass, 34 of those coming at the All England Club, and a fitting way to etch his name into the record books. Federer slumped to the grass in relief after putting away a smash on his second match point, and the 25-year-old wiped away tears as the capacity crowd rose to acclaim a brilliant performance.

The top seed took the opening set on a tie-break, but Nadal hit back to level the match and was often playing the better tennis, particularly from the back of the court. After losing only his second set of the championships, Federer was looking increasingly frustrated at being unable to shake off Nadal, frustration which magnified when he failed to convert a break-point in the opening game of the third set.

By the time Nadal served at 5-5, the contest had been going longer (two hours and 17 minutes) than any of Federer’s previous matches in the fortnight, and was probably the toughest since last year’s final between the pair. Another tie-break was required to decide the outcome of the set and again it was Federer who came out on top, his 16th ace giving him a 4-2 lead and he took it 7-3 with the first of his three set-points.

Federer looked to have seized control of the match, only to lose his serve in the opening game of the fourth set as Nadal whipped a forehand return winner past him. To make matters worse, the world No1 was then broken again in controversial circumstances in the third game. Nadal successfully challenged a call on the baseline to create a break-point, but Federer remained convinced the ball had been out despite the evidence of Hawk-Eye on the big screen.

He appealed to umpire Carlos Ramos to have the system turned off, complaining: “It’s just killing me today. How in the world was that ball in?” Ramos was unmoved but some hope for Federer came after he held serve to make it 4-1, Nadal taking a medical time-out at the change of ends to receive treatment on his right knee. The 21-year-old appeared unaffected as he held serve on the resumption, and by holding serve again he took the set 6-2 to set up a thrilling decider.

Federer had the advantage of serving first in the decider, but Nadal had won his last seven five-set matches in a row, including back-to-back victories at Wimbledon this year. The only five-set match Federer has played at Wimbledon came when he beat Pete Sampras in 2001, ironically ending the American’s own bid for a fifth straight title, but there was to be no denying the Swiss star.

Federer saved two break points in consecutive service games, and then broke Nadal with some inspired passing shots, three forehand winners giving him a 4-2 lead. And another break of serve then sealed a thrilling victory.