SHAID “Lucky” Luqman, once one of Britain's richest men, and Ernst & Young's Young Entrepreneur of 2004, has walked free from prison after serving six months of a second sentence for contempt of court.

A judge jailed him for a year in March for failing to explain what happened after Barclays lent him £120 million, just three years after he emerged from a previous prison sentence for fraud.

Luqman surrendered his British and Pakistani passports in 2007 when Mr Justice Briggs said his fraud was “truly shocking in its scale and audacity”, carried out “under the noses of auditors, solicitors and funding bankers”.

For shredding documents and further contempt of court, the 38-year-old was jailed again for 12 months in March.

Today, at the Appeal Court, one of his victims gets a chance to reverse last year's ruling by Lord Lloyd allowing Barclays to seize 48 acres of land fraudulently staked against loans to Luqman.

Lloyd found Barclays could sell the land even though its genuine owner, businessman Trevor Guy, had not borrowed any money from Barclays. Without Guy's knowledge, the Land Registry computer logged his land as mortgaged to Barclays by a firm in Gibraltar owned by Luqman and one of his sisters.

The Land Registry will be watching today's proceedings, described by Lloyd as “truly exceptional”, with close interest. The case may force a re-examination of the computer entries for Britain's 21 million registered property owners.

* IN what must be one of the most astute sales ever (or worst purchases, depending on which way you look at it), Trinity Mirror flogged the Racing Post for £170 million at the top of the market in 2007 to a group of Irish investors. It was a pile of money when you consider that Trinity Mirror, with five national titles and a vast portfolio of regional papers, is worth barely twice that amount today. The purchasers made their dosh in Ireland's property boom and er, look what's happened to that. Hence rumours circulating the paddocks that the title may be once again up for sale...

Sassenach sell-off for the Scots

AH, the canny Scots. To fund the bailout of the banks, including Scottish banks, Gordon Brown is selling such English assets as the Dartford crossing, the student loan book, the Channel Tunnel rail link and the Unreco plant. What about Scottish assets? Scottish Water and some Scottish airports are owned by the Scottish government. Why don't they bail out their own banks?

* HOW Caz wins friends... When the firm completed HSBC's recent £18.5 billion fund-raising, directors and senior executives at the bank were sent solid oak boxes from JPMorgan Cazenove. Inside was an engraved Cartier pen with their name on it and a ceramic cheque for £18.5 billion signed by Naguib Kheraj, JPMorgan Caz's chief executive, and Ian Hannam, co-head of equity markets.

* BLIMEY — what is life like chez Brumby? The Astaire pubs, leisure and travel analyst, Mark Brumby , appends his latest client note with this: “I came close to burning down the house over the weekend. Not as a result of some recession-inspired insurance scam but rather as a result of cutting up some old railway sleepers and putting them on the log fire where, impregnated with 150 years' worth of diesel oil and axle grease, they proceeded to burn like Roman candles before exploding in a shower of sparks and singeing the one side of the dog's head.” Alas, the dog is “not a pretty picture and, as the exploding logs affected his balance, he can now only turn left. Thus feeding time can make for an interesting spectacle as it can take him half an hour to get across the kitchen via any number of ever-decreasing, furniture-bashing circles, which is wont to leave him collapsed with hunger, nose still twitching some feet short of his feeding bowl.” After that, Mark turns his attention to Whitbread and the rest...

Spotty's boy gets a bad press in Latvia

A spot of bother for Jonathan Rowland, 34-year-old son of legendary City financier and property developer David “Spotty” Rowland.

Spotty, who made his first million aged just 23 and these days is largely retired in the Channel Islands, amassed a £630 million fortune wheeler-dealing in the 1970s and 1980s. Jonathan, pictured here after his high-profile divorce, has picked up the baton and been named as the buyer, for a reported 10 million (£9.4 million), of two Latvian newspapers, the daily Diena and Dienas Bizness.

Alas, the locals aren't too chuffed. Senior journalists have quit, accusing Aleksandrs Tralmaks, Diena's new chief executive and a middleman in the deal, of misleading staff. Sweden's Bonnier publishing group divested the two newspapers and other titles in July to a Luxembourg company founded by Tralmaks and Estonian financier Kalle Norberg.

They said the transaction was financed via a bridging loan that would be repaid and the eventual owner would be a newly created mutual fund. Diena's senior editors also maintain Tralmaks hinted that investors involved with Skype had financed the acquisition. But Tralmaks has now disclosed that Rowland is the buyer.

The resignations were triggered by unhappiness with Tralmaks, and not by news of Rowland's involvement. Feelings have been heightened by fears that the paper, founded in 1990 when Latvia was still part of the Soviet Union, may end up in the hands of those connected to the Russian government.