For Me, But Not For Thee
Huh.
Well, that’s nice, isn’t it?
The SNP are hoping to make out like bandits from Peter Murrell’s conviction.
Despite Swinney’s admission yesterday that the party stole £700,000 from donors to two “ring-fenced” fundraisers, it stands to pocket a surprise bonus of £400,000 from recovering his criminal proceeds (on top of Swinney’s boasted “significant increase” in donations from gullible idiot members since Murrell’s conviction).
It is not currently known whether that will include the retrieval from Nicola Sturgeon of the gifts Murrell bought her with embezzled money – a suggestion Sturgeon was mortified by in her Laura Kuenssberg interview on Sunday.
But keeping goods you know were bought with stolen money is a crime in Scotland, whether or not you knew at the time you received them.
It seems clear from the above clip that Sturgeon has not “immediately take[n] steps to hand the property over to the police”, and has no apparent intention of doing so.
Murrell’s lawyer told the court this week that his client “had enough funds to repay the sum he embezzled from the party”.
That’s an extremely interesting revelation in itself, in several ways. For one, we don’t know whether it means only the £400,000 he was convicted for, or also the extra £60,000 that the Crown dropped from the charge sheet in his plea deal.
The former case would create an extraordinary situation where the SNP was being paid back for stuff Murrell stole for himself, but not for stuff he stole for Sturgeon.
The second startling thing is that since no recovery process has yet begun and nothing has been sold, the lawyer’s statement means that Murrell must CURRENTLY have at least £400,000 in liquid funds, despite having a take-home pay of only around £57,000 during his time as CEO and having lent £107,000 to the SNP. That’s quite a feat of squirrelling. (And also means he’ll still be quite wealthy when he comes out of prison.)
So the SNP plans to keep everything that rightfully belongs to it and its members, but also to keep everything that doesn’t, including donations that were solicited and obtained from members of other parties EXPRESSLY because they were NOT to be used for everyday SNP operations.
And seemingly means to let Nicola Sturgeon enjoy the fruits of Murrell’s theft to boot.
We can therefore forgive anyone who treats John Swinney’s assertions in his email to members today – that the party is a new, reformed moral entity that conducts itself with the greatest moral probity and is now above all suspicion – with extreme scepticism.
Under “Honest John” Swinney the SNP appears to be the same unprincipled, grasping, crooked, cynical and greedy bunch of shysters and snakes that it’s been since 2015, and the slow-learning cretins still throwing their money at it thoroughly deserve to – and doubtless will – be robbed again.
As John Swinney omits to mention it:
The person who is the SNP business convener and is thus the line manager for the CEO, Callum McCaig, is currently Angela Constance.
She took over the role from Kirsten Oswald in November 2023.
If the SNP recover the £400,000 that was stolen from them, I imagine they’ll immediately ring-fence it and put it towards the £600,000 that they stole.
Surely they will??
Apologies in advance for what may be stupid questions.
If Murrell has liquid funds of approx £400k why did the taxpayer have to foot his legal costs?
Since it appears he was flush, but pleaded poverty, is this not a form of fraud in itself?
I believe it was because his assets had been frozen, leaving him no access to any funds.
I believe that the key word in your post is “liquid”, Nae Need!
Mr Murrell’s funds and assets will, I imagine, have been frozen and he will not have had access to them.
Since the legal system would seem to me to be run for the benefit of its professional servants the Advocate who represented Mr Murrell will be paid from (as usual) the long suffering and inexhaustible public purse.
I would strongly suggest those of a mind to do so write to the SNP, demand their ring fenced donations for a referendum campaign or household guide be returned. Inform the fraudsters that if such is not forthcoming that you will pursue them through your Sheriff Court via the “Simple Procedure”:
link to scotcourts.gov.uk
All I need do is find the relevant bank statement!
I haven’t been an SNP member since 2015, but went on to join Alba and the ISP. I donated to a party of which I was not a member because they claimed to intend using my donation in a future referendum campaign.
Instead, they used the money to campaign on behalf of themselves in elections, and in doing so actively campaign against the other parties of which I was a member.
I did not donate to a referendum fund just for the party conducting the fundraising campaign to use the money for purposes not as advertised, and certainly not at the expense of other parties of which I was a member!
I left the party a long time ago now, but it still breaks my heart to see what it has become. They are never going to deliver independence or even deliver any means of achieving it – and the sad fact is that they never intended that things should be any different.
I remember John Swinney from his first sojourn as party leader, before Alec Salmond had to come back to take over from him. He was always a devolutionist. I met Nicola Sturgeon when she stood beside Mr Salmond as his running mate for the deputy leadership, and I said at the time that I did not believe she really was behind independence.
It’s fine and dandy saying that now, but it was the impression I got at the time and I recall wondering why Mr Salmond had chosen her. Rumour had it that Roseanna Cunningham was to be his running mate, but that Ms Sturgeon threatened to stand against him for the leadership and take the youth/younger wings with her, splitting the vote and the party. I have no idea how true that was.
2015/16 was also the time that droves joined the party. They came, mainly, from Old Labour, and, while most of them were kosher, too many crept in from the hard left, and helped the party to be formed into a ‘woke’ fiefdom for Ms Sturgeon and her cohort. It all started to go wrong from early 2016 onwards, and 2016, when the Brexit bounce was totally wasted through lack of courage and another agenda.
It must be unarguable that certain top notchers in the party were/are British state assets. That, however, does nothing to mitigate the home-grown debacles that occurred, the stupidity of our Scottish institutions in going along with everything from the absurd to the certifiable and the sheer malignancy that passes for politics in Scotland.
Talk about having your cake and eating it.
How does he manage to steal £400,000, spend it, and yet have enough left over to repay it, while at the same time qualifying for legal aid… and have £50,000 or so written off as legitimate expenditure from his wages for gifts for his wife.
Magic Squirrel talents indeed.
Once again though, the question is, how can it be legal for the SNP to have used stolen money to finance their 2017 GE campaign.
Some of us got refunded.
I have an archived 2019 email from SNP.org of receipt of the donation which stated that it had “been put into a ring-fenced fund” then a screenshot of a message from Peter Murrell with a donation reference number. I used that reference number 2 years later to ask for the money to be returned to the source and got a response from JIM HENDERSON, Party Fundraiser. I got the money back but they appear to have lost the records of what accounts the money originally came from.
Re the ringfenced money being used for the 2017 GE.
Should this have been declared to the Electoral Commission as a donation from a single source/pot?
I didn’t ever study embezzlement. I didn’t ever study how to run a political party and I didn’t study how to take the piss out the people of an entire country.
But for once, just once, and I am aware that this is a REVOLUTIONARY idea, but would somebody for once in their sad sorry existence please tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the FUCKING TRUTH!
Is that too much to ask? It sure as hell would be a much more simpler thing to do.