One of Donald Trump’s most senior cabinet members and his Scots wife have close ties to a trust spearheading plans for a contentious luxury housing development in one of Scotland’s most sought after neighbourhoods, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

The entity, known as the Rockshiel Trust, intends to build swaths of modernist townhouses and apartments in a coveted conservation area in Edinburgh.

The trust is among a slew of Scottish property holdings and Bank of Scotland accounts worth up to £9m that have been disclosed by Steven Mnuchin, the US Treasury secretary.

Documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics (OGE), a Washington DC-based agency of the US government tasked with preventing conflicts of interest in the executive branch, show Mnuchin listed at least five properties in the capital as part of the multimillion pound international portfolio of assets he has with his wife, the Edinburgh-born actor Louise Linton.

"Now we see someone linked to the heart of the Trump administration developing a prime area of the city, seeking to maximise their return. " Neil Findlay MSP

However, the US Treasury Department stressed that Mnuchin, 56, has no financial interest in the Rockshiel Trust, and that it was only disclosed on his OGE forms due to his wife's interest in it.

Linton, 38, is a beneficiary of the trust, which stands to make a sizeable windfall if its plans for 17 properties in west Murrayfield’s Kinellan Road are greenlit. The average house price on the street stands at nearly three quarters of a million pounds.

The Treasury Department declined to comment on why a series of shareholdings held by Linton in other Scottish companies have not been disclosed by her husband.

Neil Findlay MSP said that at a time when Edinburgh is suffering from an affordable housing crisis, the plans by those “linked to the heart of the Trump administration” are the “last thing” the city needs.

While neighbours in Murrayfield are unaware of the involvement of the controversial couple in the proposed multi-story housing development, the plans have already attracted scores of objections to date.