THE handful of billionaire landlords who own vast tracts of Scotland have their links to shocking exploitation of workers and scant disregard for the environment exposed by new research published today.

Dane Anders Povlsen — who built his fortune on the back of a company notorious for flouting workers’ rights — is among the businessmen, bankers, oil barons and even Emirati princes who own land in Scotland put under the Global Justice Now spotlight.

Former Highlands and Islands Enterprise chair Professor James Hunter has called Scotland’s land ownership system as “the most concentrated, most inequitable, most unreformed and most undemocratic land ownership system in the entire developed world.”

But the campaign’s research shows that rather than merely passing down feudal family lines, foreign billionaires have also bought their way into the system.

And as a result, hundreds of thousands of acres are owned by people whose wealth is based on exploitation, human rights abuses, union-busting, tax avoidance and wrecking the environment.

The descendants of the Stella Artois and Lego dynasties are now included in the ranks of Scottish landowners alongside the Dukes of Buccleuch and Argyll.

The new breed of global capitalists staking their claim to Scotland’s land have been involved in unregulated fracking, land grabs and privatisation of national parks in Africa, large-scale trade union-busting and job cuts in Mexico and Brazil and abuse of workers’ rights in Britain, the research reveals.

Mr Povlsen owns a 27 per cent stake in clothing company Asos as well as 150,000 acres in Sutherland and Invernesshire.

The online retailer is notorious for poor working conditions and has been described as a “modern sweatshop.”

Union GMB says staff have to urinate in water fountains due to lack of toilet breaks.

Global Justice Now Scottish campaigns chief Liz Murray urged the Scottish government to go further on land reform and “fundamentally change Scotland’s absurdly outdated feudal system of land ownership which includes super-rich land barons like these.

“It’s clear that the public and local communities want to see a different system that is transparent, accessible and productive, and where land is in the hands of the many not the few.”

The release of the research is timed to coincide with the start of the Our Land festival, now in its second year and which is launching a new push for the Scottish government to go further on land reform.

• Details of all the local events can be found at www.ourland.scot.

Case Studies

Pitmain estate: 12,000 acres near Kingussie in Invernesshire, owned by Majid Jafar, boss of Crescent Petroleum, which made money by its association with Saddam Hussein. Jafar opposed a windfarm due to concerns about it affecting grouse shooting.
Letterewe estate: 85,000 acres at Ross-shire. Owned by the Van Vlissingen family, owners of the African Parks Network, which was involved in attempts to try to privatise national parks and pulled out of Ethiopia when the government did not remove indigenous people from its land.
Altnafeadh estate: 22,000 acres near Ballachulish in West Highlands, owned by the billionaire de Spoelberch family. They are controlling shareholders of AB InBev — the largest brewery chain in the world. The company is notorious worldwide for large-scale union-busting and destruction of job. In Mexico a subsidiary dismissed 220 workers for forming an independent trade union and has since sacked hundreds more for supporting trade unionism.