Ping-Pong-Fiddle-Aye-No
Alert readers will have found it hard not to notice that Wings is currently focused on trying to solve one mystery above all others: why nobody has been prosecuted for a massive theft of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which took place in open sight, beyond any dispute, and is openly admitted by someone who was there at the time.
Until this week, nobody in the two organisations responsible for criminal prosecutions in the country – Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (the Crown Office or COPFS for short) had issued any sort of explanation of why the original Operation Branchform investigation apparently fell by the wayside when it led police to discover a second crime: that of embezzlement against the SNP by its then-Chief Executive, Peter Murrell.
But this week, with very little fanfare, the BBC quietly put out two extended interviews with senior representatives of those organisations, seemingly the unused footage from their half-hour televised documentary “Peter Murrell: The Man With The Money”.
The first was with Police Scotland’s Deputy Chief Constable, Stuart Houston.
The second was with the shadowy figure of John Logue, a Crown Agent at COPFS.
You can watch them in their entirety above, although we don’t particularly recommend it – they’re both pretty dull, and largely concerned with the embezzlement case, about which they provide no dramatic new revelations.
But both also touch on (the lack of) prosecutions over the original complaint. So what happened when the BBC’s Glenn Campbell brought the subject up?
Campbell admirably persists for several minutes, but Houston refuses to be drawn on any sort of answer other than that Police Scotland passed the question on to COPFS for “advice and guidance”, and when given several opportunities to confirm Sturgeon’s claim that she was “completely exonerated” by his force, he steadfastly refuses to say whether the police wanted a prosecution or not.
Now without wishing to be rude to DCC Houston, much of what he says is barely in comprehensible English sentences, so let’s get it down in writing and tidy up all the ums and emms and ehs and see what it looks like.
GLENN CAMPBELL: Why was Nicola Sturgeon not reported for prosecution?
STUART HOUSTON: So again, part of the police investigation we’ve commented upon that Nicola Sturgeon was subject to arrest and interview during the investigation, as was Colin Beattie. The circumstances of those arrests, the information that the police held was all subject of [an] Advice And Guidance Report to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, where it was laid out what their involvement or what their position was in relation to any crime. And –
GC: Did she do anything wrong?
SH: The police, you know, and I suppose for me to say that we report the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service [to] allow them to make the decision whether someone is prosecuted. For us, we put in the circumstances to allow them to make an informed decision –
GC: You didn’t recommend prosecution in her case?
SH: We didn’t make any recommendations to prosecute or otherwise, our role is to report the circumstances.
GC: Well, the Crown are very clear that they accepted your recommendation that there was not enough evidence for a prosecution. Is that correct?
SH: So, our our role is to report all the circumstances to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in relation to everything that’s happened. You know, whether that be any investigation and not necessarily unique to this inquiry. We then seek advice and guidance what way they think that that should go. It is their decision in relation to the prosecution of cases.
GC: Were you happy to leave it at that?
SH: Again, we we act and work in conjunction with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and we have to do that, and the fact is that we are there to act on their behalf to carry out investigations, and it’s essential that we work together and reach agreement on certain things to make sure how we take things forward, whether about progressing to get warrants etc.
So as I say we report the circumstances and again it is for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to assess that as well and provide any advice and direction.
GC: And just one last thing on that – were you in agreement with the Crown that there was no case to pursue that might lead to a prosecution?
SH: So again, our line was very much “Here is all the evidence that we have collated as much as we could find”. Our job is not to to have that final decision. Our job –
GC: But hang on a minute – in the case of Peter Murrell, you’re sending in a report saying that this guy’s committed a crime and should be prosecuted. I recognize that it was a different type of report that you sent in in relation to Nicola Sturgeon, but therefore can we conclude that you did not think there was the evidence there for her to be prosecuted or for further inquiries to be made?
SH: So I think to to distinguish between the two types of report is in the fact is of Peter Murrell there is a Standard Prosecution Report to say we have carried out an investigation and we can have evidence of certain offenses that we put forward.
An Advice And Guidance Report is that – the word is in it – is the fact is “here’s the circumstances that we’ve uncovered. We’re seeking your advice and guidance on where we go next” and that’s really important, and the fact is in those occasions where there is a circumstance that you need to examine, that’s for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service to give us advice on where we go next.
GC: Would you be happy for that report, that advice and guidance file that you sent into the Crown, to be published?
SH: Again, I think that’s something that we need to be very mindful of the fact is that that is a lot of information. Some of that is sensitive information regarding other individuals. And again, that is a report that is shared between the police and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service –
GC: You’re not saying no.
SH: That wouldn’t be a matter for the police to release that that information.
GC: But would you be comfortable if eventually that was put into the public do?
SH: That [wouldn’t] be a matter for us. We’ve delivered that to the Crown Office and any release of information for that would be a matter for the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.
Now, frankly that’s still pretty much just burbling word salad, but one theme does come across loud and clear:
“Not us, guv, you don’t wanna be asking us, ask the Crown Office, it’s all on them. We’re just evidence-gatherers, the Crown Office makes the decisions”.
In that short clip alone, DCC Houston mentions COPFS no fewer than eight times in nine answers. He couldn’t be any clearer where he wants us to look for accountability.
So what happened when Campbell DID go and ask the COPFS man?
John Logue (or as we believe he’s known to all his homies in the ghetto, J-Logue) is a rather more eloquent speaker than DCC Houston. But his theme is remarkably similar to the police officer’s:
“It weren’t me, guv, the police didn’t want to prosecute and we just agreed with them. They decided it. Not us. Them.”
He mentions the police 12 times in his answers, almost all asserting that the police had made a decision – something that we’ve all just watched the police strenuously and categorically deny several times. (Verbatim police quote above: “We didn’t make any recommendations to prosecute or otherwise”.)
Again, here it is in text form:
GLENN CAMPBELL: Why no prosecution of Nicola Sturgeon?
JOHN LOGUE: There was no prosecution because the police came to the conclusion that while they had reported Peter Murrell to us for consideration of prosecution, the police came to the conclusion that before they would submit any report, they would check with us as prosecutors, which is a normal thing that happens in any other case, whether they had enough evidence to prosecute.
And it was clear, I think, to the police that if they had had enough evidence in their eyes to prosecute, then they would have reported Nicola Sturgeon. There would have been no reason not to having reported Peter Murrell. But their investigation in relation to Nicola Sturgeon reached a point where they felt the right thing to do was to check with us as the prosecutors whether there was enough.
And we looked at it and we agreed with their assessment that there was not enough evidence to report Nicola Sturgeon to us for prosecution. And so that police assessment was entirely correct.
GC: As you mentioned, you have a power of direction. Um, did you ask them to go and do more work on her?
JL: So, in looking at that evidence that they had investigated, our conclusion was we couldn’t see any further reasonable lines of inquiry that would allow you to develop and build the case.
So, that was an obvious point that we considered, but our conclusion was there didn’t appear to be anything else that could be done. And therefore the police assessment that they did not have enough to report Nicola Sturgeon to the prosecutor was an appropriate decision.
GC: So that’s not to say there was no evidence but insufficient evidence to develop into a prosecution.
JL: Well, we have to be very careful what we’re talking about when we talk about evidence because when you talk about evidence that doesn’t necessarily mean evidence of someone’s wrongdoing.
It can be evidence particularly in a case like this of the surrounding circumstances of what were the arrangements for the management of the funds within the SNP. Did Nicola Sturgeon have knowledge of how those funds were being used? Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon know that things that were being purchased were being purchased with SNP funds?
So you look at the evidence in the totality and we’re very careful when we say there was insufficient evidence.
That doesn’t mean there is always evidence that you’re looking at because you’re looking at these financial circumstances within an organisation.
But I want to be very clear that people shouldn’t read into that that there’s any sense of a quantity of incriminating evidence, but it just wasn’t enough. That’s not the way we look at it.
We look at the evidence in the round and some evidence can be incriminating, some evidence can be exculpatory. And our job as prosecutors is to look at it in its totality and reach a conclusion about could we persuade a jury to convict someone according to the normal procedures and laws in Scotland.
GC: So in her particular case, you didn’t think she knew what was going on.
JL: We thought the police were correct in their assessment that there was not sufficient evidence to report it to the prosecutor for the question of prosecution.
The reason I’m being quite careful about that is there are important legal differences. So this was not a case where the prosecutor decided not to prosecute having had a report from the police. That’s a very different type of decision and has different legal consequences.
So that’s why I think it’s important given the public interest in the issue to be as clear as possible that this was a case where no report was sent to the prosecutor and our view having looked at what the police had done was that that was the correct thing for the police to do.
GC: Why did it take seven months to reach that decision?
JL: Because of what I’ve explained about the need to look through the type of evidence that I’ve talked about. You’re talking about really complex financial records. Some pieces of evidence had tens of thousands of pages of files with many many lines of transactions.
GC: Not in her case, right?
JL: No, but the evidence was looked at together. We were looking at the question of the evidence against Peter Murrell and at the same time we were considering whether the police had reached the right conclusion in relation to Nicola Sturgeon.
And the other reason I think you’ve got to remember why this took time was the documents didn’t all easily match up. This wasn’t a financial case where you could easily get one set of records, get a second set of records and fit them together and they were a complete match because of what we could show Peter Murrell had done to change and alter the way in which the transactions were being recorded in the SNP. Nothing matched.
And so it takes time then you’ve got to really unpick all the records that are there which have for example reasons against them which turn out not to be true. And so you can’t just easily find a corresponding entry in each system.
GC: So is it reasonable for Nicola Sturgeon to say that she was cleared as a result of all this investigatory work that she was exonerated? Is that reasonable for her to say?
JL: All I can say is that Nicola Sturgeon was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland by the police for consideration of prosecution. How anyone else chooses to characterize that, I have to leave it to them.
But my view of it is she was not reported to the prosecutor in Scotland for consideration of prosecution because the police took a view on the evidence that had come from their investigation and our view was that that was correct.
GC: Did Nicola Sturgeon fully cooperate with the police and the Crown in their inquiries?
JL: Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed by the police and after the interview provided information through her solicitor.
GC: Was that sufficient — that statement that she gave after her no comment interview?
JL: The statement was an explanation of her position and we were able to take that account into our assessment of the evidence and it didn’t materially change in one way or another the conclusion that we reached.
So what have we just learned? Basically it goes like this:
POLICE SCOTLAND: Here is all our evidence on Nicola Sturgeon. Please give us some advice and guidance on what to do next.
COPFS: We agree with your decision that we shouldn’t prosecute her.
POLICE: But that’s not what we said. We said we didn’t know what to do, and we asked you for advice and guidance.
COPFS: Our advice and guidance is that we agree with you.
POLICE: Agree with what? We asked you a question.
COPFS: Yes, we agree with your decision.
And so on, back and forth, ad infinitum. Ping follows pong follows ping follows pong. Neither man actually makes explicit reference to the disappearing fundraiser money, and Logue in particular keeps subtly trying to steer things back towards the separate crime of Murrell’s embezzlement.
Note this passage:
“Did Nicola Sturgeon have knowledge of how those funds were being used? Didn’t Nicola Sturgeon know that things that were being purchased were being purchased with SNP funds?”
That only makes sense with regard to the embezzlement. It is, plainly, ludicrous to suggest that the leader of the SNP wouldn’t know that SNP resources were being spent on what John Swinney described as the “ongoing activities” of the party.
Why, indeed, would anyone even attempt to hide that from her? “SNP spends SNP money on legitimate SNP activities” isn’t any sort of crime.
The problem, of course, and the trigger for there having been an investigation in the first place, was that this money expressly and explicitly WASN’T supposed to be spent on the normal “ongoing activities” of the party.
And in those circumstances it IS a crime. Sturgeon insisted there was no missing money, so she must have known that it had been spent intentionally, even if she didn’t know Murrell had diverted some of it into exotic tableware for her house rather than election leaflets.
So we have incontrovertible evidence of TWO crimes, only one of them dealt with, and the other being one that Sturgeon MUST have been up to her neck in.
But after 75 minutes of video from the two men whose job it was to decide who got prosecuted, we’re still absolutely none the wiser as to why she didn’t face charges, and indeed didn’t even have to face any proper questioning. We haven’t seen the report, and Sturgeon hasn’t produced the list of written answers she sent the police, despite saying she’d be happy to publish it, but it’s up to her lawyer.
Everyone’s batting the ball to everyone else, saying THEY’VE got the answers, and that we all need to stop asking, and that they’ll be making no further comment.
But we promise you this, readers: the questions are never going to stop. And unlike the SNP, we keep our promises.
Stu, I admire your ‘dog with a bone’ tenacity. I simply cannot believe that Scotland is openly sweeping a crime of this magnitude under the carpet. Sturgeon needs to see a dock asap.
She cannot be allowed to swan off into the London sunset while protesting her innocence.
They are in cahoots and Murrell agreed to take 100% of the fall with the likely assurance that he’ll be seen alright once he’s out the pokey.
“a rather more eloquent speaker”
An whit difference daes it mak?
Maybe we should have the USA Grand Jury system to decide if there is enough evidence for a prosecution trial. Our legal and police authorities don’t seem to know what to do or are they just incompetent? I wonder what would have happened if the “accused” had been anyone other than the First Minister?