Wings Over Scotland

It’s now more than three years since this site drew attention to the curious case of Progress Scotland, the zombie “polling company” run by the SNP’s Angus Robertson that had no employees and hadn’t published any polls since October 2020, but was apparently still accepting, and soliciting, donations from subscribers, and appeared to have disposed of a rather substantial amount of money (well into six figures) without producing anything to show for it.

We followed up the next day with another article about the company’s repeated delays in producing its 2021 accounts, which finally showed up in May 2023.

Here’s what the Progress Scotland website looks like today.

And once more, a few questions spring to mind.

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Our solicitor has this afternoon written to the Deputy Chief Constable.

We’ll await his response with interest.

Further to Monday’s letter from the Deputy Chief Constable, we’ve now submitted the following Freedom Of Information request to Police Scotland, as per his suggestion.

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To: FOI <foi@scotland.police.uk>

15 July 2026

This week I received a letter from DCC Stuart Houston. It notes in part:

“During this time, Police Scotland utilised financial investigators, financial analysts and a forensic accountant to fully investigate the circumstances surrounding reported irregularities. Consideration was given to other crime types, such as, but not limited to, those listed in your letter. 

These matters were also fully investigated, and all of the circumstances were reported to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service for advice and guidance.”

As Police Scotland announced that Operation Branchform was closed on 26 May 2026 and is no longer a live investigation requiring confidentiality, and as the matter is of such great public interest – involving as it does the extremely grave matters of public confidence in the Scottish Government and the integrity and independence of Police Scotland and COPFS when investigating potential crimes committed by members of that government – the information I request is therefore as follows:

(1) What advice and guidance was received from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service specifically regarding the initial complaint about the Scottish National Party’s suspected misappropriation of “ringfenced” fundraiser money (rather than the subsequent offence of embezzlement against the Party for which Peter Murrell was prosecuted and convicted)?

(2) On which date/s was this advice and guidance received?

(3) On which date (an approximate one, eg “August 2023” or “Spring 2022”, will suffice if a more precise one cannot be identified) did Police Scotland cease investigations into the original complaint of misappropriation of funds by the SNP (again as opposed to Peter Murrell’s subsequent embezzlement from the Party)?

(4) Did they do so on the grounds that (a) no crime was identified, or that (b) there had been a crime but the perpetrator/s could not be identified, or that (c) there had likely been a crime but evidence was insufficient for a prosecution, or for some other reason?

In the interests of transparency I can see no justifiable reason for these facts being withheld from the public.

The integrity of the government, police and prosecution service is not a matter of mere curiosity or prurience. It is vital to public faith in national institutions and I will pursue this matter with the Information Commissioner if necessary.

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We’ll be sending a similar one to the Crown Office, and our solicitor will also be writing to Police Scotland separately. We’ll continue to keep you posted.

Before we start, let’s note that this took 37 days.

As you’re about to read, it says almost nothing other than “Please go away now”.

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Looks like we turned that round pretty fast, gang. Six weeks ago:

And today:

Amazing what a draft document and a KC opinion can do, eh? A casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that the SNP was absolutely cold-sweat desperate to avoid a civil case that would set a powerful precedent for a legal prosecution.

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Wings has this evening received a formal legal opinion from Roddy Dunlop KC with regard to the prospects of success of a claim of fraudulent breach of trust by the SNP against donors to the “ringfenced” referendum campaign fundraisers.

We attach it below. We continue to seek more people to join the group – if you donated and aren’t happy that your money was misappropriated, please drop us a line via the confidential Wings contact form. If you’ve already done so, thank you, and stand by to hear from us shortly.

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We’ve had TWO emails from the Crown Office already this week, neither of which says anything except “Please hold”.

We’ve added them to our “in due course” collection, also featuring Police Scotland.

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As we told you last week, we’ve now had counsel draft our application for a group proceedings action on behalf of donors to the “ringfenced” independence referendum campaign funds which were stolen and spent by the SNP on party business.

The draft can be read below. We’ve already gathered dozens of people who are unhappy about having their donations misappropriated by the party, and we invite any others who’d like refunds and compensation to join the group by getting in touch via the Wings contact form.

(There will be no cost to you from becoming involved in the claim.)

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Here’s a passage from Crown Agent John Logue’s recent BBC interview in which he described the crime for which Peter Murrell was just sentenced to five years and three months in prison. You’ll note that we’ve highlighted a few words and phrases in red.

JOHN LOGUE: I think the best way I can describe it is in some ways this case was no different from embezzlement that people might recognize in their daily lives. If people are a member of a church or a bowling club or a golf club, if someone in that organization has access to money on behalf of the society or the club and takes it and spends it in the local shops, that’s embezzlement.

And in some ways this case was as simple as that because what we were able to prove after the police investigation and after our investigation was that that was what Peter Murrell had done here. He had access to and control of party funds and he used it for his own purposes and that’s the crime of embezzlement. 

And now let’s just swap out those words for some very similar ones.

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We’ve just sent this letter to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

Dear Sirs/Madams,

Thank you for your response, which I have considered with care.

I note you have advised that “full consideration was given to whether the crime of fraud could be established. That investigation did not disclose sufficient evidence of fraud, or for any crime other than the crime of embezzlement. These conclusions were agreed by the procurator fiscal, by Crown Counsel who was a KC and by a reviewing KC.”

I agree that the evidence to which I have pointed demonstrates the crime of embezzlement, as I said to you in my previous correspondence. The point is, however, that there are two instances of embezzlement: that to which Mr Murrell pled guilty (ie his embezzlement from the SNP); and that which has seemingly not been the subject of investigation and certainly not prosecution, for reasons which remain unclear.

The evidence to which I have pointed admits of little doubt. In short:

1. Money was ingathered by the SNP on the basis of assurances that it would be “ringfenced” for defined purposes
2. That money was thereafter subject to a trust under Scots law, in terms of which it could only be spent for those defined purposes
3. The First Minister of Scotland has now confirmed that the money was spent on other matters.

It really is that simple. It defies belief to think that the Procurator Fiscal and two KCs could look at that simple factual matrix and conclude that there was no evidence of a crime.

That being so inherently unlikely, I can only assume that those involved were not considering that point, and were (as your last reply suggests) considering rather whether or not it could be shown that fraud was involved in the solicitation of donations. I can quite understand that proving fraudulent intent at the time the donations were sought would be difficult.

But again (and at the risk of repetition) that is not the point. Assume that the donations were solicited in bona fide for the defined purposes: thus no fraud in ingathering the money.

That does not answer the question which I am posing, which is on what possible basis could it be lawful for those donations then to be spent on anything other than the defined purposes for which they were solicited?

I thus invite you to reconsider.

I should say that I have instructed the drafting of civil proceedings based on fraudulent breach of trust, which as I am sure you are aware is the civil equivalent of embezzlement.

Given that fact, I dare to suggest that it would be rather embarrassing for the Crown Office to be found to have ignored repeated requests to look at this very point if a civil court decides that what I have described above as a simple factual matrix does indeed show that which I contend is blatantly obvious: embezzlement, in the form of the wrongful use of money held on trust by those to whom it had been entrusted.

Regards etc,

Rev. Stuart Campbell

As ever, we’ll keep you updated.

And in relation to those last two paragraphs, if you were a donor to any of the SNP’s “ringfenced” fundraisers and you’re not happy that your money was stolen and used to elect the likes of Karen Adam, Lloyd Melville, Patricia Gibson, Alyn Smith, Kirsten Oswald and – ultimate trolling – Colin Beattie instead, please drop us a line via the Wings contact form. We’ll be getting in touch with all respondents very soon.

We have received a further reply from the Crown Office.

Alert readers may note that while Wings has repeatedly noted that the misappropriation of the fundraiser money by the SNP could constitute either fraud OR embezzlement (or both), entirely separate to the embezzlement FROM the SNP by Peter Murrell, the Crown Office continues – as its agent John Logue did in a recent BBC interview – to address only the possibility of fraud, which would be by far the more difficult of the two to prove, and to ignore the elephant in the room, which is that no less a personage than the First Minister has already admitted to spending all of the money on a purpose other than that which it was raised for.

The response is therefore plainly unsatisfactory, which we will deal with in our own reply within the next 24 hours, which will again be drafted by counsel. We will of course publish it here once it’s sent, so stay tuned.

We’ve already discussed the contents of the videos released last week by the BBC containing interviews with Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston of Police Scotland and Crown Agent John Logue of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

But videos (especially lengthy ones) are always a bit of a pain to reference, and these are incredibly significant documents, so we thought it’d be quite useful to post the full transcripts too, with the text tidied up (taking out all the “um”s and “eh”s and so on) for ease of reading.

This is the interview with John Logue (Stuart Houston’s is here):

And below is what’s said in it. We’ve added a comment here and there, in red.

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