A Long Hard Think
More than three months ago now, we sent Police Scotland a Freedom Of Information request. A few minutes ago we finally received a response. Brace yourselves.
That is, um… interesting.
Retaining gifts you know were bought with embezzled money is the common-law crime of reset in Scots law, under the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995.
There used to be an exception whereby a wife could not be found guilty of reset in respect of items given to her by her husband, but it was abolished by the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Scotland) Act 2014.
So the numerous high-value items which we know Nicola Sturgeon was given by Peter Murrell and paid for with embezzled money are legally the proceeds of crime, and must be handed over as soon as the recipient becomes aware of their provenance.
It is, to the best of our knowledge, still the police’s job to investigate crimes and the crime of reset is unarguably being committed here. Sturgeon knows how Murrell came about the items, but has publicly stated that she has no intention of returning them, telling Laura Kuenssberg in May this year that:
“There will now be, I would imagine, a legal process to recover the money from Peter that he embezzled from the SNP […] I am not guilty of that embezzlement, so nothing that belongs to me should be part of that.”
It is somewhat staggering, then, that Police Scotland not only have no knowledge of whether any of the items have been returned, but also have no knowledge of whether they’re intending to investigate the crime, or to just turn a blind eye to it as they’ve done with the original missing £700,000.
We’ll be honest with you, readers, we’re at something of a loss for words at this point. It genuinely does not appear to be at all clear whether the laws of Scotland apply to Nicola Sturgeon or not. We’re going to have to contemplate how to respond to that for a little bit. All we can say for now is, she must REALLY love those fancy pens.
I am sure the answer is no, but has there been a follow up on the he latest letter from the he crown office?
If not, is there going to be one?
I would pretend to be surprised, but I can’t even bother with that nowadays.
I bet they haven’t responded to the Letter Before Action either, even though you gave them 14 days to respond 22 days ago.
So Police Scotland took years painstakingly recording what money was spent to buy what items – it is their duty to recover all of those items as they were bought with the proceeds of crime. For them to fail to do that – and be evasive when asked about it, reeks of corruption. Banana Republic Scotland
I did not think I lived in North Korea but it seems i do
“If you require any FURTHER assistance…”?!?
Murrell had lent money to the SNP to help their cash flow position and the items purchased for his wife totalled approximately £60k. I assume that as part of the plea bargaining Murrell wrote off the loan and agreed to plead guilty and the total embezzled was subsequently reduced in the charge. Accordingly those items were purchased with his own money and so the wife could not be charged with reset. Just my opinion and a could be wrong.
That still leaves 400k worth of stuff that the police are required by law to recover.
Wouldn’t the reaction of most right minded individuals in this situation be to find the items tainted and want to be rid of them?
Isn’t the real reason no police action has been taken to prevent her further embarrassment from media coverage of a police auction of these items?
Am I right in thinking is the value of these goods were excluded from the sum Murrell was charged and convicted of embezzling ? Why if Police/ Prosecutors knew they weren’t going to recover via proceeds of crime.
As you conclude Stu the law appears not to have been applied to these two.
Remember how £70k odd of stuff was taken off the indictment before Pete Murrell pleaded. There is still a whole load of other stuff – what is not clear is whether the saintly Sturgeon can argue that she only retains items not on the list of admitted criminal purchases? Anyway – if she was half way decent she’d want to divest herself of everything possibly tainted by Murrell’s crimes.
Just re-looked – funny how they have no information as to their own intention to follow the goods up or not.
She must love the Venus razors too.
Surely nobody’s believing Murrell bought them for his own use?
When linked to the postponement of Murrell’s proceeds of crime action to December, absolutely everything about this long term investigation and legal action stinks.
And that stench comes from the SNP.