A taxi firm linked to Scotland's top crime godfather has won a temporary reprieve thanks to a bureaucratic blunder.

Licensing officials at Glasgow City Council had been expected to shut down CS Cars, a company owned by the wife of James Stevenson, known as "The Iceman", following a request by Strathclyde Police.

It will now be at least a fortnight before the police can put their case to the licensing committee, after it emerged council clerks failed to enclose details of the police's argument and that this was a breach of human rights.

The move to remove the taxi operator's licence would have taken 10 Skoda Octavias, which Stevenson admitted buying with £98,000 worth of "dirty money", off the road.

The cars have been licensed in his wife Caroline's name, the business said in court to be a conduit for laundering drugs money.

At yesterday's meeting Mrs Stevenson's lawyer, James McDonald, said despite his client receiving 20 letters telling her when to appear before the committee, a sheet which was supposed to be attached outlining the chief constable's complaints was not.

Mr McDonald argued it would be in breach of European human rights legislation if the proceedings went ahead without Mrs Stevenson being fully aware of the charges she was answering and insisted he only received a copy of the police's letter the evening before the hearing.

Telling Mr McDonald his client could have another fortnight, committee convener John McKenzie said he was "puzzled" why Mrs Stevenson opened only half of the letters, insisting the police statement could have been in one of those she had left sealed.

He also insisted the committee believed "100%" that the complaints had been sent with the letters. Mr McKenzie said: "If the letters were mine and there was something missing in them, I would continue to open them all until none remained sealed."

Yesterday's attempt to close CS Cars comes two months after Stevenson, one of the UK's top 10 crime lords, was jailed for 12 years and nine months after pleading guilty to money laundering worth more than £1m.

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