Scottish gang truce hides pivot to lucrative cross-border drug trade
A sudden drop in violence in Scotland’s longest-running gangland feud signals not an end to organised crime, but a calculated pivot by European networks toward quiet, highly profitable cross-border drug trafficking.
Police Scotland has reported a sharp decline in violence following the dismantling of the Lyons gang. This ends a 25-year conflict with the Daniels family that recently saw 84 incidents in six months and a double murder in Spain.
The turning point came earlier this year when Steven Lyons was arrested alongside his wife and over a dozen associates. This followed the assassination of his brother, Eddie Lyons Jr, and associate Ross Monaghan in Fuengirola last June, a strike that former superintendent Martin Gallagher described as a "decapitation" of the organisation.
Steven Lyons’s downfall stemmed directly from his international expansion. Having fled abroad years ago, he operated from Spain and Dubai, forging ties with Ireland’s Kinahan cartel through an associate. Detectives used evidence from the 2020 EncroChat hack—an infiltration across 13 European countries that yielded 6,558 global arrests—to target the cartel's money manager and ultimately build a case against Lyons.
As of 2023, the EncroChat operation was responsible for more than 3,000 arrests in the UK alone, with defendants continuing to appear in court. The disruption forced a strategic retreat from violence. “If you’re a good organised crime group, you don’t commit violence, because that’s just what brings the police down on you,” said Karyn McCluskey, who pioneered Scotland’s Violence Reduction Unit.
For European law enforcement and border agencies, this sudden truce is a warning rather than a victory. The remaining criminals are not retiring; they are abandoning conspicuous violence to focus on their core revenue stream. “They’re focusing on what they want to do to make money – which is import drugs,” Gallagher noted.
This transition from violent turf disputes to streamlined illicit trade mirrors broader trends across the continent. Gangs are prioritizing supply chain efficiency and avoiding the police scrutiny that accompanies public firebombings and shootings.
The illicit economy remains highly active. Police found a £1.7 million cocaine stash in a Glasgow outskirts village just last week, resulting in a charge for a 34-year-old man. As Graeme Pearson, a former Labour MSP, observed: “The business is too lucrative to suddenly die overnight. It’s like running a seam of gold. If you know the gold’s there, you’ll keep going back to it.”
