Professor Robert Black has expressed his concern at a news report published by the Sunday Times and repeated across other news outlets that Abdelbaset Ali Mohmad Al Megrahi had a sum of £1.8 million secreted in a Swiss bank account.

He described the "breathless" report as forming part of a "spurious case" that the Times was trying to "punt" as part of the news agenda ahead of the anniversary of the Pan Am 103 incident.

The Times claimed that the funds indicated Megrahi was not a low ranking airline employee as he had "claimed". Black points out that no claim had ever been made.

"It has never been claimed by the Libyan government or by Mr Megrahi or his lawyers that he was "a low-ranking airline employee". He was Head of Security for Libyan Arab Airlines, a very high-level post. But that obviously does not fit the spurious case that The Sunday Times is trying to punt," he said.

The report comes in the same week that the Times claimed Al Megrahi could not be located by East Renfrewshire Council monitoring his bail terms.  The non-arabic speaking Times reporter could not communicate with the officials at Megrahi's home in Tripoli, and thereafter "alerted" East Renfrewshire Council, who broke their timetabled protocol of calls and located him the next day, outside the scheduled contact arrangements.

Black also expresses doubts about claims in the report that the Crown Office denied bail to Megrahi in 2008 because they were aware of the funds.

"The Crown Office, Scotland’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, has confirmed it refused to grant bail to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi as recently as November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money," the report said.

Black adds: "At no time during the bail hearing, which I attended, did the Crown oppose interim liberation on the basis that Mr Megrahi had a bank account in Switzerland or otherwise had large sums of money available to him.

"Nor was this one of the reasons for refusing bail given by the court in its judgment. Is the Crown Office being economical with the truth here, or did the Sunday Times journalist misunderstand what was being said to him?"