Secret Millionaire businessman Tony Banks is to appear in court accused of a sustained assault against his partner in their Angus home.
Falklands War veteran and nursing home tycoon Banks is alleged to have spat at Kimberley Anderson and grabbed her by the throat in the December incident.
The 54-year-old founder of the Balhousie Care Group has already appeared in court, where his solicitor entered a not guilty plea on behalf of the businessman, charged under the name of Anthony Banks.
The summary level charge alleges that on December 9 at Platten in Kirriemuir’s Brechin Road, Banks assaulted Ms Anderson by throwing a mobile phone at her, striking and kicking her on the body and repeatedly seizing her by the hair.
He is further alleged to have repeatedly pulled her to the floor, repeatedly kneeled on her stomach, slapped her on the head, spat on her and seized her by the throat and compressed it, all to her injury.
Banks is due back in court early next week for a pre-trial calling of the case, with trial set down for February 2.
The Balhousie Care Group has grown to become Scotland’s largest private care home provider since Banks began the business in Kirriemuir in the early 1990s.
In 2009, the former paratrooper took part in the sixth series of Channel 4’s popular programme The Secret Millionaire, spending time on a run-down estate in Liverpool and offering support to projects there after the experience.
He returned to the television screen a year later in a BBC documentary entitled From War to Peace which charted the ex-serviceman’s journey to Argentina to return a trumpet taken as a war trophy during the Falklands conflict.
An award-winning entrepreneur and well-known philanthropist supporting causes including Combat Stress and the Stroke Association, Banks was also a high profile figure in the Scottish referendum debate through his key role in the pro-independence Business for Scotland organisation.
In 2011, he revealed he had paid $200,000 for a seat on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space craft project.