ClearACheque boss Eddie Ramsay sues Lord Advocate and Chief Constable for £15m in malicious prosecution claim

He said the probe was over allegations that had "no basis of fact" and which "lacked substance".

It is believed to be one of the first active actions to surface after former joint administrators of Rangers David Whitehouse and Paul Clark won a landmark case to be able to pursue the Lord Advocate over unlawful prosecution.

Last year courts ruled that the Lord Advocate no longer has absolute immunity from being pursued in the civil courts for malicious prosecution with others over the collapsed Rangers fraud case.

It marked a momentous change in an area of the law that has remained largely untouched for almost sixty years.

Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark agreed a settlement estimated to be worth around £24m after an agreement in their malicious prosecution case against the Lord Advocate and the Chief Constable was reached "extra-judicially". Others are also making multi-million pound claims.

Mr Ramsay said: "This was totally malicious and it is going to end up a big mess just like the Rangers case."

He said the raids led to the demise of the business, and the loss of hundreds of agents across the UK associated with his business which began operating in 2000.

Mr Ramsay, who once owned Edinburgh's Powderhall and Glasgow’s Ashfield greyhound stadiums once the pride of Scotland's flourishing greyhound racing world, said that he had been accused of facilitating £60m worth of gangsters cheques as part of the scam which he described as a "pure and downright lie".

Flashback to the days of greyhound racing at Powderhall

He says he is yet to be told of a single gangster whom it was even alleged was involved.

Mr Ramsay ran ClearACheque with family members, and was said to have cashed thousands of cheques each week and exchanged foreign currency.

It was promoted as "one of the leaders and founders of instore cheque cashing".

Mr Ramsay, who is also a former owner of betting shops, was detained for five hours in a cell and charged in August, 2014 in relation to the scam, five months after the raids which were carried with HM Revenue & Customs personnel present.

Over five years later, on May 14, 2019, Amanda Bennett-Mitchell, procurator fiscal depute for the serious and organised crime unit confirmed that the case had been dropped.

She wrote: "I wish to advise you that... a decision has been made not to raise criminal proceedings against you and no further action will be taken.

"The decision has been taken on the ground that there is insufficent admissable evidence."

Mr Ramsay says that at the time of the raids, there was no reasonable grounds for suspicion and that there had been no mention of any actionable evidence that he had been money laundering the proceeds of crime on behalf of a number of criminals.

He says it was a "travesty" that a court granted a warrant for the raids with "nothing more than suspicion of a crime and without knowing what material was being searched for".

Mr Ramsay said no cash was found or confiscated and has talked of years of "torturous mental and physical anguish".

He says the reputation his family had built up over 60 years in business had been "ruined and in tatters" as a result of the case which was responsible for the closure and liquidation of ClearACheque.

As part of the action, Mr Ramsay says that during the investigation Police Scotland had made "outrageous unsubstantiated claims" that he and his family "were crooks" and his company's employees "were all crooked". The claim is understood to be denied by Police Scotland.

Mr Ramsay said that he had been identified as a friend of gangster Paul Ferris which he denies. He says he has met Ferris, who was an enforcer for Glasgow 'Godfather' Arthur Thompson in the early 1980s, eight or nine times but never "went about with him".

He and business colleague were personal guests of Mr Ferris at the Glasgow premiere of The Wee Man, a 2013 film about the criminal's life directed by Ray Burdis and starring Martin Compston and John Hannah.

"When I got raided all of a sudden I am Ferris's pal. That's all I needed. I ran betting shops so you meet all types. I do know him. I never found him to be a bad person. But I didn't go about with him."

He added: "After five years they couldn't find a thruppence worth of mistakes never mind fraud.

"This is a family who work seven days a week, don't drink and don't smoke, we ran Powderhall, we ran the betting shops and the police acted on hearsay.

"They have ruined a national business. We were probably the cheapest in the whole country doing what we were doing. And they shut me down in 24 hours based on hearsay.

"Since 2014 I haven't been working, I have been fighting this, no income. I cannot afford the QCs that the Rangers boys have so I have been doing it myself and just keeping telling the truth."

Court documents suggest that both the Crown Office and Police Scotland deny they were engaged in any "fantasy" in relation to the investigation and that the procurator fiscal's letter makes no admissions.

A Crown Office spokesman said: "We cannot comment on matters that are before the court."

A Police Scotland spokesman added: "As this is an ongoing legal case it is inappropriate for us to comment."

When it operated it said it specialised in offering a third party cheque cashing service through a network of independent convenience stores, sub post offices, service stations, and other outlets across the UK.

The website promotional material stated: "We cash thousands of cheques each week for many construction workers, tradesmen, health care, nursing and support staff, service industry personnel as well as migrant workers, recruitment agency contractors and everyday people that are receive cheques for many different reasons.

"The ClearACheque cheque cashing service is available to any rightful owner of a cheque, whether they have a bank account or not, as most existing account holders prefer not having to wait for cheques to clear through their account or may be restricted by their bank overdraft.

"Our rates are very competitive and by having agents nearer your home or workplace that are open late six days, you do not have to waste valuable time and money travelling to dedicated cheque cashing stores in the next large town or city centre."

It was registered with HM Revenue & Customs as a Money Service Business (MSB) as well as with the Office of Fair Trading and the Information Commissioner's Office for Data Protection purposes.