Alex Salmond has rejected claims he allegedly bullied civil servants as malicious and unsubstantiated after suggestions of ministerial misconduct emerged in Scottish government papers.

The former first minister said reports that civil servants raised concerns inside the Scottish government about his alleged bullying ten years ago were unfounded, and warned he could take legal action.

The new claims follow the disclosure last month that two female officials had made formal complaints in January of alleged sexual harassment by Salmond while he was first minister.

They two officials’ allegations were investigated by Leslie Evans, the permanent secretary of the Scottish government, and passed to Police Scotland. The force said it was assessing that information. On Friday, a police spokesman said: “Our inquiries continue; we will not be commenting further.” Salmond has vigorously denied the allegations.

The Record newspaper quoted union sources and cited official papers released by the Scottish government under freedom of information legislation which referred to “a history of alleged bad behaviour” by ministers in Salmond’s government and previous Labour and Tory administrations.

The Scottish government said it had received no formal complaints of any kind against Salmond until the two claims in January this year.

A spokesman for Salmond said the Record’s report “is based on nothing more than anonymous malicious briefing from unnamed sources and a complete misinterpretation of documents released under freedom of information last January”.

The spokesman said Salmond was now focusing on his judicial review of the Scottish government’s handling of the harassment allegations. “We will do our talking in court,” he said.

“Mr Salmond is now entirely focused on the upcoming judicial review in the court of session. However, at the appropriate time action will follow against the Daily Record and any other outlet who repeats defamatory material.”

Scottish government emails and minutes appear to show civil service unions told senior servants in 2009 they had had informal complaints of alleged ministerial bullying from their members, although no minister was named in the papers and no formal investigation was launched.

Those reported complaints dated back to previous Tory governments before the devolution of power to the Scottish parliament in 1999, included ministers in the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalitions which formed the first two Scottish governments and had continued after the Scottish National party won power in 2007.

That led the Scottish government to insert new procedures for officials to report ministerial bullying in an updated fairness at work policy, which was already being drafted. The rules on ministerial bullying complaints were agreed to by Salmond as first minister.

Those rules put Nicola Sturgeon, then deputy first minister, in charge of arbitrating on any complaints against all ministers and also against Salmond, then her boss and mentor.

One set of minutes from November 2009 said: “The unions receive phone calls from their members about problems in ministerial offices but no one has submitted a formal report. The unions reported this is frustrating for them. Also, their members perceive the unions as not doing anything about the problem.”