Ex-Hearts football player Paul MacDonald to pay back £240,000 of £3m fortune made from drug trafficking

A former footballer who was caught in a major drug trafficking operation has agreed to £241,882 being confiscated from him to settle a court proceeds of crime action brought against him.

Ex-Hearts player Paul MacDonald was jailed for seven years in 2023 after he was found to be part of a serious organised crime operation dealing in Class A drugs.

Prosecutors brought an action against MacDonald, 37, seeking to recover crime profits from the former Scotland youth player, and a judge at the High Court in Edinburgh was told a settlement was reached in the case.

Advocate depute Bryan Heaney said under its terms, it was agreed that MacDonald had benefited from crime by £3m and the available amount for confiscation was £241,882.

He said the sum was made up mostly of cash, with £225,795 available. Other items, including watches, made up the remainder of the amount.

Mr Heaney said that one of the timepieces was a TAG Heuer watch, which was valued at £4,500.

MacDonald’s co-accused Craig Balloch, 33, also agreed to have made £3m from crime and will have more than £200,000 confiscated. Balloch was earlier jailed for seven and a half years for his role in the serious organised crime drugs operation.

Judge David Young KC said he would grant the orders that were sought in the confiscation actions brought against the pair.

MacDonald had boasted of selling cocaine worth up to almost £2m a month before he was caught.

Detectives discovered encrypted texts during their investigation, which helped catch the pair.

MacDonald and Balloch subsequently admitted being involved in serious organised crime between February 2019 and June the following year.

MacDonald was initially seen at a drugs handover in Cambuslang, in Lanarkshire, in March 2019, and a number of phones were seized during a search of his home in the town.

They contained texts referring to cocaine as “tops” and heroin as “bots”. Advocate depute John McElroy KC said: “An iPhone attributed to MacDonald has messages discussing the purchase and sale of high-value watches.”

The prosecutor said a substantial number of messages were recovered detailing involvement in the sale and supply of drugs, and in one encrypted text, MacDonald stated he “sells approximately 50kg of top quality cocaine a month”. It would have been valued at £1.9m at the time.

In another message, he said: “We still got million odd quid after bills are paid.”

Balloch of Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, indicated to an associate that “1.5 million a month” in cash was being “moved around”