Wings Over Scotland

I’ve just recorded an episode of the BBC ScotCast podcast, which should “drop”, as we say in the media biz, around teatime tonight. It focused largely on issues around Operation Branchform, and the fact that only one of the two crimes it concerned has been resolved.

Time always flies when you’re having fun, so I ended up not being able to fit in half the stuff I wanted to say in the 40 minutes I chatted with Martin Geissler (which will likely shrink to fit into the 30-minute broadcast slot by the time they’ve edited all the most libellous bits out).

And one of those things was the bewildering fact that the investigation into the SNP’s finances went on for two years before the police stumbled into the second crime, and the only one that’s actually concluded – Peter Murrell’s embezzlement from the SNP. Because the first crime ought to have been all  but done and dusted in 24 hours max.

In the often-complex world of financial fraud, the amazing thing about the case of the missing fundraiser money is how absolutely straightforward it is. There’s almost no aspect of it that isn’t immediately empirically obviously proven.

Let’s walk it through.

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STARTING POINT: You are the police, investigating a possible crime of fraud and/or embezzlement, on the grounds that money raised for a specific purpose has allegedly been unlawfully misappropriated and used for something else.

Now, if that had happened it would unarguably be a criminal offence, or the police obviously wouldn’t be investigating it in the first place.

Remember, nobody, at the time Sean Clerkin and others filed complaints on the basis of Wings’ revelations about the SNP accounts, had any inkling that Peter Murrell had been personally pickpocketing party pennies to spend on lah-di-dah bric-a-brac for the Murrell/Sturgeon kitchen cupboards.

Their complaint was specifically that the SNP had spent “ring-fenced” fundraiser money on other SNP stuff, and the only reason the police would open an investigation into that is that, if true, it would be a crime. They don’t investigate if you get too many of the horrible licorice ones in a bag of Midget Gems, no matter how upset you might be about it. (Don’t ask me how I know.)

The next question is which crime specifically. Either the money was raised with no intention of spending it on the advertised purpose, in which case it’s fraud, or it was raised in good faith but later spent on something else, whereby it’s embezzlement.

(Option 3 is that you discover the SNP still has the cash and everything’s fine, at which point you end the investigation.)

The number of facts you need to establish is therefore incredibly small:

(1) Did the SNP raise hundreds of thousands of pounds in 2017 and 2019 that they promised would be kept in reserve for a second independence referendum campaign, and explicitly NOT spent on normal SNP activities?

Answer: Yes. Simple, straightforward, yes.

TIME TAKEN TO ESTABLISH: One minute or less on Google.

(2) Had they in fact spent almost all of that money by the end of 2019?

Answer: Yes. Simple, straightforward, yes.

TIME TAKEN TO ESTABLISH: One minute or less on Google.

(3) Had there been a second independence referendum?

Answer: No. So the money hasn’t been spent on that, it’s been spent on something else, and either fraud or embezzlement has clearly occurred.

TIME TAKEN TO ESTABLISH: One second. No Googling needed.

That’s the “whether” already dealt with. Now there’s only the “who” left.

(4) Who was responsible for the decisions to raise the money and then to spend it on normal SNP activities?

Answer: Under the SNP constitution, the Leader (“leads election and other campaigns”, paragraph 26b), the National Treasurer (“ensures the sound management of the Party’s finances”, paragraph 29a, “convenes the Finance and Audit Committee”, paragraph 29b, “reports to the National Executive Committee and National Conference on the finances of the Party”, paragraph 29c) and the National Executive Committee (“ownership of the Party’s assets and management of the Party’s financial affairs”, paragraph 32.1h).

The Chief Executive (Peter Murrell) is not governed by – or indeed mentioned at all in – the Constitution, but is actually an employee of the party, appointed at the sole discretion of the Leader. The Chief Executive is constitutionally answerable to the Leader, the National Treasurer and the National Executive Committee. It is primarily their job to keep the CEO honest.

TIME TAKEN TO ESTABLISH: The SNP constitution is quite a lengthy document – a couple of hundred pages – and even though much of it is obviously not applicable, let’s be diligent and read it right through, carefully. One day.

(5) Are all of the above therefore culpable for the misappropriation of the “ringfenced” money, and therefore for the crimes of fraudulent solicitation, embezzlement, or both?

Answer: Yes. Simple, straightforward, yes. Who else?

(6) Should all of the above therefore be arrested and given the chance to explain their actions?

Answer: Yes. There’s no reason to wait. A crime has been clearly established on day one of the investigation, and we’ve already narrowed down the list of suspects to a handful of people, who should all be brought in for interview in order to find out which of them is responsible. If they’re not sufficiently co-operative they can be charged and a trial will sort it out in the fullness of time.

TIME TAKEN TO ESTABLISH: There are quite a few people on the NEC, but there aren’t actually many questions to be asked, so including the one day we’ve already spent, let’s allow a generous total of two weeks to get through everyone.

(7) How many pieces of evidence need to be examined to reach this conclusion?

Three.

 (i) the fundraiser website and related statements from the SNP pledging that the “Independence Referendum Campaign Fund” (variously also called the “Referendum Appeal Fund” or “Referendum Campaign Fund”) was separate to, and ringfenced from, ordinary donations to the party

(Remarkably, in that last image Colin Beattie both claims that the SNP doesn’t separate out restricted funds in its accounts, and then in the very next sentence refers to a separated restricted fund called the Referendum Appeal Fund.)

 (ii) the SNP’s constitution

 (iii) the SNP’s accounts for 2017 and 2019

That’s it. We’ve linked them all there for you. That’s all you need to establish beyond doubt that a crime has been committed, and who perpetrated it. The only thing left to determine is whether it was fraud or embezzlement, which you do by arresting the suspects, questioning them and deciding which ones, if any, to charge with the crime/s.

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At the most generous possible estimate, including all the interviews, that investigation should have taken a fortnight. Either there should have been a trial or the matter should have been closed, and nobody would ever even have found out about Peter Murrell’s little peccadilloes. (We’re sure they’d have been diamond-encrusted ones.)

There was nothing left to be done. Indeed, every material fact was already in the public domain before they even started.

Instead, it seems that Police Scotland stalled for two years and then stumbled onto something they found a little juicier, at which point they just forgot about the initial complaints entirely.

And here’s the really funny part, gang – Peter Murrell’s crime was a thousand times more complicated than the original one. It involved fake receipts, moderately elaborate money-laundering, even lending the party back some of the money he’d stolen from it. It was a legitimately complex investigation, as many frauds are.

Yet the police tied it all up in a speedy nine months – far less than half the time they’d taken to completely FAIL to resolve a much, much easier case.

Operation Branchform opened on July 2021. The police first announced it had widened into an embezzlement investigation two years later – July 2023.

And as early as the following spring, Murrell was charged.

Why did a vastly harder inquiry move so much faster than an open-and-shut case that can essentially be solved in a single day by anyone with an iPhone?

Maybe there’s an inverse correlation between how complex something is and how long Police Scotland take to get to the bottom of it. That would certainly explain why we’re now well into the SIXTH year of a perjury investigation in which only ONE fact needs to be established – was Woman H in Bute House on the night she claims Alex Salmond tried to rape her there? – and that matter has already been determined by a jury, as well as being staggeringly easy to clear up using Bute House’s records. They don’t let just anyone wander into the First Minister’s digs off the street.

Oh, but wait a minute – that’s one’s not on Police Scotland at all, but the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. What a coincidence, eh readers?