No Money Back, No Guarantee
Peter Murrell wasn’t even locked up in his cell at Saughton (we hope it’s the same one as Craig Murray’s) when the chump-suckering resumed.
And as the Nicola Sturgeon Loyal, led by her most faithful of lieutenants, set out to try to take control of the post-conviction narrative, let’s take a look at just what a boatload of bare-faced bullshit the above is.
Everyone in Scotland, not just the SNP’s members or independence supporters, was a victim of Peter Murrell’s crimes. For a start because Operation Branchform cost close to £3 million of public money, dwarfing the £400,000 Murrell pinched to spend on a houseful of frou-frou knick-knacks. (The police bill alone of over £2m does not include the Crown Office’s costs.)
But even the cash directly trousered by Murrell didn’t just belong to SNP members. The pot of party funds he pilfered it from was filled from three main revenue streams:
(1) SNP members’ membership fees and donations
(2) UK taxpayer funding, the large bulk of the SNP’s income
(3) Money donated by the wider independence movement to two fundraisers which ultimately triggered Murrell’s arrest, which were supposedly “ringfenced” for an “Independence Referendum Campaign Fund” but in fact just disappeared into the SNP’s general treasury and from there into Murrell’s pockets.
That last one, incidentally, remains an unanswered question. The two fundraisers combined raised almost £700,000 but Murrell only copped a plea for misappropriating £400,000 of it, and the rest remains unaccounted for.
We know it was spent years ago because as far back as October 2020 there was only £97,000 left in the party’s bank account, and the SNP has tried a whole string of absurd madcap excuses to explain away the fact that it was plainly, demonstrably and fraudulently frittered away on lavish and wasteful general party spending – the exact thing they angrily insisted WOULDN’T happen.
Operation Branchform started as an inquiry into the missing fundraiser cash but then morphed into a wider embezzlement one, leaving the original complaints unresolved. The former has a different and narrower group of victims to the latter, and they still deserve answers, not from Peter Murrell but from Nicola Sturgeon and her then-deputy John Swinney.
But it looks like they’re ontae plums.
Sturgeon’s girlboss fanclub have pulled out all the stops to excuse her.
But Sturgeon quite literally WAS responsible.
Not because she was Murrell’s wife and £80,000 of very pricey Amazon parcels were piling up, unnoticed by her, in the kitchen they ostensibly shared (although we’re told that their marriage was such a facade that neighbours referred to the house as “The Prop”), but because she was his boss – and as such had a direct fiduciary duty to party members to stop him doing what he did – and because she personally signed off the accounts from which hundreds of thousands of pounds were missing.
Sturgeon can’t even plead simple ignorance, because she didn’t just direct enquiries to the party’s auditors. She repeatedly, actively and personally asserted, in public and in private, that there was NO missing money and that the party’s finances were in rude health and anyone suggesting otherwise would be for the high jump.
Murrell’s activities might have gone unnoticed by the auditors (whose remit is very narrow and technical), but you didn’t need to be an accountant to see that the money simply wasn’t there, you only had to be able to read.
If Wings, a humble website run by an idiot, could spot it in 2020 – by the simple act of noticing that 97 is a smaller number than 700 – then the party’s leader, whose legal responsibility it was, certainly could and should have.
That is something that still needs explaining after Murrell’s conviction. Two people – Sturgeon and treasurer Colin Beattie – both signed off on accounts that were clearly and obviously dodgy to even an amateur eye, and it’s difficult to tell why neither has yet been charged with any crime.
The most plausible explanation – which came to us from a senior former SNP source yesterday – is that the Crown Office, having already suffered an embarrassing defeat over Alex Salmond, didn’t want to risk being seen to have mounted two expensive and unsuccessful prosecutions of SNP First Ministers in a row.
But even if we leave aside for a moment the questionable neutrality of an organisation headed by a person who is also a Scottish Government minister and answerable to the FM, the state of the Crown Office’s delicate ego is not an adequate reason to abandon valid complaints about serious crimes.
Yesterday morning Sturgeon – “The people’s QUEEN, living her best life” – affected a breezy air, posting holiday snaps on Instagram along with a personal statement about how sad and shocked and etc she was over Murrell’s crimes.
She ended the statement with the words “I will be making no further comment”. So anyone previously familiar with her track record on promises therefore wouldn’t have been surprised when it was followed just hours later with a further comment.
While the first had been in her own name, the second statement was lawyered up. It was issued by semi-celebrity lawyer, publicity aficionado and political activist Aamer Anwar, and backed up by a threatening email Anwar sent to much of Scotland’s media.
We say “threatening”, but on close inspection it’s got about as much legal menace as a TV Licence reminder. If the media fail to delete defamatory comments by readers or viewers, it says, Anwar is instructed to “consider” legal action or – oh no! – complaints to the toothless press watchdog IPSO.
Also, the threat carries with it a tantalising proposition – any legal action brought by Sturgeon for defamation would result in her having to appear in the witness box and be cross-examined in forensic detail by the defendant’s lawyer about what she did and didn’t know. You could make a fortune selling tickets to such an event, and Sturgeon’s usual “I don’t remember” approach to questioning, as seen during the Salmond and COVID inquiries, wouldn’t cut much ice.
Yesterday also revealed something we were told by an unimpeachable source two years ago, but couldn’t talk about while Sturgeon was still under investigation for fear of contempt charges – the fact that despite claiming to have “fully co-operated” with police when she was arrested, she in fact turned her chair to the wall and didn’t say a word for seven hours. She is of course legally entitled to remain silent, but it’s a very stretched definition of the word “co-operating”.
(Just as it had been when she publicly pledged to give the Salmond inquiry anything it asked for, and then, in conjunction with John Swinney, directly obstructed it and refused to hand over documents on almost 60 separate occasions.)
For the record, and for the reasons already stated above, it is absolutely this website’s belief that Nicola Sturgeon knew there was money missing from the SNP’s accounts, and that she was lying when she said otherwise, and furthermore that she dishonestly fronted a fundraising campaign while knowing that she had no intention whatsoever of “ringfencing” the resulting money. Mr Anwar knows where to find us.
Today, the SNP will attempt to deflect from the scandal with another performative vote in Holyrood about demanding a second indyref, secure in the certain knowledge that it’ll fail. John Swinney will attempt to alchemise the Parliamentary arithmetic into the “100% guaranteed” referendum he said would result from an SNP majority, despite the fact that he didn’t achieve one.
He won’t have any more luck than Sturgeon did when she pulled the same stunt twice before (in 2017 and 2020) then quietly scuttled off when Westminster said no, and no more luck than donors to the SNP’s “ringfenced Independence Referendum Campaign Fund” will have at getting either their stolen money or their dreams back.
Although by this time next year, both he on his First Minister’s salary, and Sturgeon on her fat book advance and other lucrative income streams, will indeed be millionaires.
You think she could have saved everyone a lot of money if she had just turned over the books and energetically cooperated with the police.
A fraud like this should have been what used to be known as an open and shut case. A gift to crime clear up stats.
I suppose love and loyalty are powerful motivations.
“Love and loyalty.”
Oh Paul, what are you like ! Nearly choked on my morning toast & coffee by chortling merrily at such comic gold, you wee mischief you.
I really, really want to comment on this post, but I am almost speechless.
How do you articulate the feelings of horror, disbelief, betrayal, revulsion, dismay, fury, despair and utter powerlesness when faced with the demonic evil of our so-called ‘leaders’?
There aren’t words.
So much bravado, bluff and bluster from (ex?) Mrs Murrell and her legal representative.
I very much doubt the follow-up behaviour will match the bombast.
I did not expect to hope that you get taken to court.
I’m confused by the ‘revelation’ of her silence during police questioning as I already knew about that. I thought it was common knowledge. For the life of me I can’t remember where I learnt it.
And could the rest of the missing money have gone to the salary of newly created sinecures in the SNP machinery?
Not getting charged because of insufficient evidence and being cleared are really not the same thing.
Why is it that politicians who talk about being progressive like Sturgeon actually turn out to be Fascists who don’t tolerate any opinions other than their own? We won’t get the truth from her and unfortunately I doubt there is anyone on the opposition benches who is bright enough to get anything out of Swinney, a man who knows where all the bodies are buried and has shown that you don’t actually need to have any opinions to get on in politics, just back the right horse. Scotland and the UK are corrupt but no one is ever (or rarely) held to account and the guilty just go on to better things. As a Unionist I thought Salmond was at least competent but I always disliked Sturgeon but like many was shocked at just what a dictator she turned out to be. I have seen power go to people’s heads – even if it is just being made a school prefect or promotion at work, but Sturgeon was really off the scale but she doesn’t care about our opinions and is now off to be a media personality and make some real money. I just hope that there is an inhibition on the family home so at least Murrell’s share might enable some money to be repaid to the SNP.
Disappointing that only one thief has been jailed.
I will only add the I think Sturgeon has been very lucky.
Between the Salmond scandal and this theft it shows what a team of scumbags are in the SNP.
What Sturgeon said about Salmond in 2021:
“The behaviour complained of was found by a jury not to constitute criminal conduct and Alex Salmond is innocent of criminality, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour complained of didn’t happen and I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of that.”
——————————————————
Applying the same logic – Sturgeon may well not have been prosecuted, but that doesn’t mean that the behaviour complained of didn’t happen.
We will not lose sight of that.
I wish there was a way to upvote this comment. To paraphrase her statement:
“The behaviour complained of was found by the COPS not to constitute criminal conduct and Nicola Sturgeon is innocent of criminality, but that doesn’t mean the behaviour complained of didn’t happen and I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of that.”
Let’s remember that co-opted national party elites are merely the coloniser’s tools.
A colony’s “confidential agents pensioned off at high reward” aye comes with “guaranteed immunity” for some (Cesaire).
Reminiscent of Orwell’s “ever-degenerating capacities of imperialism” seeking to “stem the Movement for Colonial Freedom” (Elkins).
The oppressor only goes downhill from here.
“ever-degenerating capacities of imperialism”
Aye, Alf, Orwell could already see it from the very heart of the empire he was a big part of.
Empires grow old.
They get tired.
They get stupid.
They get cruel in ways that don’t even serve them anymore.
At the start, an empire knows what it’s doing… by the end, it’s just stumbling aboot, trying tae haud oan tae things it nae langer unnerstaunds.
We just have to look at the current state of Westminster to see that degeneration in action.
It’s like an auld beast whase claws are cracked and whase teeth are loose.
Still dangerous, aye — but no whit it ance wis was, eh?
And the fowk it ance haudit doun?
They’re not what they once were either. They’ve learned. They’ve hardened… and they start to remember thersels.
That’s what I think Orwell meant by “degenerating capacities”.
The empire weakens.
The people strengthen.
And the world tilts, slow but sure.
Goodbye, Britain, goodbye.
That “legal letter “ takes the ***ing biscuit “. What have they done to our once proud wee nation?
On R4’s Today programme this morning, the SNP mouthpiece was at pains to make the point – at least 3 times – that “no public money was stolen”.
Now why would they be pushing that line so strongly, especially since The Real Rev above shows it to be untrue?
My other thought this morning: Are there any published photos in existence of the former FM holding a Mont Blanc pen or wearing a Bremont watch etc, I wonder.
But somehow I don’t expect our glorious “forensic media” to also wonder anything of the sort.
The sentence will indicate a lot about what happens next. Meanwhile Alex Salmond’s treatment and the SNP’s lead role in it remains by far as it’s greatest treachery.
Mmmm. Something doesn’t smell right in this case. A lot more to this than meets the eye, methinks. Anyone else get the feeling that Sturgeon is being protected by the British establishment? Mr Murrell suddenly throws his hands up and confesses – was he quietly made an offer he could not refuse?
Was the British plant (one of them) in the Scottish government the actual FM? There were certainly enough rumours of past behaviour to suggest that she may have been seriously compromised. Was she owned? Perhaps – all this green/ woke/ LGBQ/ gender nonsense certainly provided a useful smokescreen if so.
Great article brilliant insight to it all. Bet he gets three years and is out in six months-Scottish establishment right behind them, we’re doomed
Peter Murrell, the SNP’s chief executive, loaned the party £107,620 in June 2021.
Is Sturgeon saying that she knew nothing of this – in the same year that she said there was nothing wrong with SNP finances.
Some SNP fan was saying St Nic was the queen of Scottish politics, the best Peter can aspire to is to be the queen of A wing.
Sturgeon says that Murrell claimed to have won the £125K Mobile Home on Bullseye.
She should have been suspicious as he didn’t have the Bully Tankard.
“Stay out of the black and into the red, nothing in this game for two in a bed.
Super,Smashing, Great!