President Donald Trump should be forced to explain how he bought two Scottish golf courses should, a Scottish lawmaker said, according to the BBC.Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie has asked First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to use an unexplained wealth order to get Trump to reveal how he paid for the properties.The order forces a target to reveal the source of their "unexplained" income. If the source is deemed illegitimate, the properties could be seized.Sturgeon did not commit to issuing such an order, and said she would need more information first.Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.A Scottish lawmaker has called on the country's government to use new laws to force President Donald Trump to explain how he bought two golf courses in Scotland, the BBC reported.Patrick Harvie, a member of Scotland's parliament and the co-leader of the Scottish Greens, urged First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to employ "unexplained wealth orders" to find out more about Trump's finances.Harvie said Sturgeon should issue the orders to demand that Trump explain how he was able to pay for the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire and the Turnberry Golf Resort in Ayrshire.Representatives for Trump denied that the golf courses were improperly acquired, and said that Harvie's call was motivated by bias.Unexplained wealth orders are a new investigative power in the UK which were introduced in 2018. They are mostly deployed to investigate assets which authorities believe are linked to organized crime or corruption.In most of the UK, they can only be activated by regulators or branches of the police, but in Scotland they can be ordered directly by government ministers.The subject of an order has to provide authorities with an explanation of how they came to own an asset. If the authorities are not satisfied, they can attempt to have it frozen or seized by the courts.The golf courses in question were purchased in 2012 and 2014. Harvie said that Trump bought the properties "in the midst of a global financial crisis" and said it is still unclear how he was able to pay for them.According to the BBC, Harvie claimed that Trump's known sources of income "don't explain where the money came from for these huge cash transactions," and that are "reasonable grounds" for suspicion.An unexplained wealth order would make Trump reveal the source of the money spent on the properties.The call for this investigation came after Harvie said that the US Congress "had heard concerns about possible money laundering involving some of the president's business deals," the BBC said.Eric Trump, the president's son, said the claims were untrue, and argued that the Greens party has always hated the Trump Organization, the BBC reported.Neither the Trump Organization nor the White House replied to Business Insider's request for comment at the time of publication.Sarah Malone, executive vice president of Trump International in Scotland, said that Harvie's claims were baseless and that he was seeking attention.Sturgeon said that while she is not a "defender" or Trump or his policies, she needed more information before she could address Harvie's request.SEE ALSO:President Trump has abandoned his plan to host the next G7 at his Miami golf resort. Here's a look inside all 16 golf courses he owns around the world.Join the conversation about this storyNOW WATCH: People are still debating the pink or grey sneaker, 2 years after it went viral. Here's the real color explained.
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