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Jan 2019: A burning issue: The FBI modelled crime-fighting agency once known as Scotland’s “untouchables” was shut down amid allegations of corruption and graft.

The Met reviewed the work of the agency and found that Police Scotland had most likely compromised investigations after piles of confidential files were incinerated in the car park of the former agency.

Officers at SCDEA were ordered to buy a garden incinerator and petrol to destroy paperwork after the unit managing Scotland’s undercover operations was exposed as a chaotic and potentially criminal shambles in 2011.

After the incineration of sensitive and secret documents had been revealed, Livingstone ordered a review, called “Operation Towering”, which concluded there was nothing more to investigate because the SCDEA no longer existed and Police Scotland managed covert operations differently.

However, critics say the force ignored allegations that senior officers ordered the immediate and extraordinary destruction of paperwork to conceal the chaos before the Crown Office could decide if fraud or any other crimes had been committed.

A Met Police review of “Operation Towering” did not share Livingstone’s conclusion that the burning of documents, against all standard operating procedures, was not a cover-up.

The Met review said: “The timely manner of the incineration, its closeness in time to a professional standards investigation into the SOU [Special Operations Unit] and the lack of any audit or record of destruction, throws sufficient doubt that this can be the only conclusion.”

The report was presented to the Scottish Police Authority board, responsible for holding Livingstone to account. One board member, Tom Halpin, said Livingstone must dispel any perception that he: “marked his own homework”.