Dent in the System

One Man’s Battle Against Systemic State Corruption

Meet Michael Dent. Michael approached Declaration of Dumfries to get his story out to the public. It is a story that uncovers major corruption by the so-called establishment.

Exposing corruption is DoD’s mission, so naturally we were keen to hear what he had to say. Dent’s story lays bare the depths to which the self-proclaimed authorities—the police, the judiciary, the political powers-that-be, et al—are willing to stoop in order to conceal their own criminal conduct whilst achieving their predetermined, desired outcome at all costs.

As a taste of things to come, we kick off with a small sampler exposing those wonderful civil servants at the Home Office, denying all knowledge of someone they clearly did know about and withholding information, with a strong hint of collaboration to conceal evidence which would have at the very least mitigated, if not exonerated Dent completely.

Dent claims that he is being victimised by Dumfries & Galloway’s constabulary—or ‘woodentops’ as he calls them (we didn’t disagree)—and other agents of the state because of his colourful past, and has the evidence to prove it all.

Before we name and shame these criminals in their ivory towers, uniforms and robes, it is important that we give some context of Dent’s background—from schooling to military, mischievous childhood pranks to criminality, and from Costa del Sol to Costa del HMP— a story that would grace the pages of a John le Carré thriller.

He’s been in the clinker, a sailor, a soldier… ‘A spy?’

Dent informs us that with his experience he was certainly at home in the world of espionage. The reconnaissance and intelligence training Dent received in the Queen’s Own Yeomanry Regiment would serve him well in his future endeavours. ‘Starting at the age of 17½ I pretty much learned the tradecraft of a spy,’ he reminisces fondly, ‘my training was in two parts: first with the MOD, after which I was recruited by a number of government intelligence agencies where my training continued under the tutelage of MI5 agent Norman Muiter, who gave me the codename Bellman.’

But, not so fast: we have an official statement from a serving police officer that there’s no such record of Dent ever having served in the armed forces—a statement that was used in an attempt to have Dent sectioned into a mental institution.

So, is Dent a fantasist? Or is the woodentop just incompetent—or simply lying to gain his desired outcome, putting his basic training into good effect? That is for a future article, and we will show you the evidence so you can draw your own conclusions.

Fast-forwarding to 2017, Dent set up UK Medical Marijuana Ltd (which later became UK MM Ltd), ironically funded with compensation he had received following an unlawful arrest and false accusations by the woodentops of Greater Manchester.

Since then, Dent claims to have contacted the Home Office and Dumfries & Galloway’s constabulary, amongst other organisations, regarding his open intent to produce cannabis for medicinal purposes. Having ‘Medical Marijuana’ in the business name gives more than a subtle hint, and UK Medical Marijuana Ltd also held a tobacco license—a further indicator that the company was known to the authorities.

We have evidence of D&G police officers denying that they knew anything about Dent’s business—alongside evidence proving that they absolutely did.

On 11th February, 2025, Michael Dent was sentenced to 20 months behind bars for the non-crime of growing cannabis at his Dumfries & Galloway residence—a subject we’ve covered in previous accounts such as Who’s the Criminal? Upon his release in September, Dent issued subject access requests to various bodies, one of which was the Crown Office & Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

Here is an excerpt from the information provided by COPFS: a list of defence witnesses.

There are several problems with this. First, Dent had called for several Dumfries & Galloway police officers as witnesses, none of whom appeared on the list. The other problem being that Dent had specifically named Pamela Spalding, Head of the Home Office Drug Strategy Unit Delivery Team, with whom Dent claims to have been in touch on multiple occasions in connection with his medicinal marijuana operation.

In line with GDPR protocol, COPFS redacted the name of the employee, but whichever agent was listed it is clear that contact must have been made with the Home Office in order to obtain that name—the same Home Office that went on to deny any knowledge of Dent.

Now to another vital cog in the machinery of state oppression: the legal profession. In the four years between arrest and conviction, Dent urged both Glasgow-based solicitors that were supposedly representing his interests—Graham Walker Solicitors and latterly McCusker McElroy & Gallanagh—to investigate Dent’s interactions with the Home Office regarding his cannabis operation.

What difference would that make, you may ask? If Dent was operating without a license to grow cannabis at his premises, is that not the matter over and done with? Not quite. If it could be proven that Dent was acting under Home Office instruction and guidance, as he claims, as well as in an open and transparent manner with Police Scotland, while any breach of regulations may have had the element of actus reus (the guilty act) it would have lacked mens rea (the guilty mind)—both of which are required to incriminate someone, meaning that Dent would have received either a greatly reduced and non-custodial sentence, or even the charges dropped.

Despite being contacted in September of last year, and despite numerous follow-up correspondence and phone calls in which they acknowledged receipt of the subject access requests, neither set of solicitors has responded, and resultantly both firms are in breach of UK Data Protection Regulations, as well as professional conduct standards for solicitors.

And, in a surprise to no-one, when asked via FOI request the Home Office would ‘neither confirm nor deny’ whether those—or any—solicitors had contacted them at any point over the course of four years.

Why the clandestinity? Why such unwillingness to cooperate, the hatches battened and ‘position closed’? You’d be forgiven for thinking that the parties involved in depriving Dent of his liberty perhaps had something to hide and were acting in concert to ensure, first of all, that certain information stayed buried, and second, that Dent ended up behind bars.

You’d be forgiven for concluding that Michael Dent was not punished for the minor, so-called crime of growing cannabis, but for the major, unforgivable crime of exposing the Scottish system of abuse for what it truly is.

DoD

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