This week, the former chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,000 from his party over the course of several years. So far the media has focused largely on the incredible array of luxury items he bought with the money – including a Jaguar, £2,000 salt and pepper shakers, multiple coffee machines and, of course, the infamous motorhome. Questions have rightly been asked too about what Nicola Sturgeon knew about her estranged husband’s finances and the trove of luxury goods filling her home.
Yet something very important is also being missed. It explains why Murrell was able to carry on the embezzlement long after he should have been stopped – and why John Swinney cannot hide behind his victim of criminality defence, with the First Minister this week characterising himself as a victim, and describing Murrell’s actions as a personal betrayal.
There are really two different stories about SNP finances which have ended up becoming unhelpfully conflated. The first story is about money crowdfunded by the party, which was supposed to be ringfenced for a future referendum campaign.
The total amount of donations supposed to have been ringfenced ended up being £667,000, according to a statement by Colin Beattie in June 2021. We know from contemporaneous reporting that the vast majority of this – £482,000 – was raised in the first half of 2017.
We know what happened to that £482,000, because before anyone realised this was going to become a scandal, the SNP admitted that the money had been spent on the 2017 general election campaign. In June 2017, a party spokesperson suggested to the Herald that the crowdfunder had actually been raising money for the election, not a referendum, saying: ‘Our fundraising efforts were focused on the general election.’
When the SNP published its accounts for the previous year in August 2018, those accounts showed that the party only had £8,000 cash in the bank. The money which should have been ringfenced until a referendum campaign was no longer there.
Not much attention was paid to this until the Wings over Scotland blog wrote about the SNP’s parlous financial situation in January 2020, and noted that the ringfenced crowdfunder money was missing.
At this point, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, and senior members of the SNP began what looked like a cover-up operation. They must have known the ringfenced money was raided to pay for the 2017 general election. But now that Wings was making a fuss, they decided to pretend it hadn’t happened.
This is why Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney went on TV in 2021 to deny that the money was missing, following the resignation of party treasurer, Douglas Chapman. Sturgeon told STV:
Money hasn’t gone missing, all money goes through the SNP accounts independently and fully audited and we don’t hold separate accounts. We are under no legal requirement to do that. Our accounts are managed on a cash flow basis but every penny we raise to support the campaign for independence will be spent on the campaign for independence.
Asked if the crowdfunder money had been diverted elsewhere, Swinney said: ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’ Adding:
I don’t understand quite what’s prompted this. The National Executive Committee has responsibility for scrutinising the party’s finances… and in addition to that the accounts of the party are independently audited by external auditors and are submitted to the Electoral Commission for scrutiny.
Now, let’s turn to the second story: Peter Murrell’s embezzlement. The year by year evolution of his crime looks like this:
Several things stand out. Murrell’s criminality was pretty small scale until he started to accelerate the looting in 2016. Importantly, this was before the first of the party’s Indyref2 crowdfunders was launched in March 2017.
The majority of the embezzlement happened from 2019 onwards. In other words: most of the money was taken out after the disappearance of the bulk of the crowdfunder money was made public in 2018, with the publication of the 2017 accounts.
Almost half of the embezzlement happened from 2020 onwards. In other words: almost half happened after Wings had first raised questions about where the crowdfunder money had gone.
This timeline explains why Murrell was able to continue the embezzlement for so long. Sturgeon, Swinney, and numerous other senior SNP figures were trying to cover up run-of-the-mill dishonesty, and this allowed criminal dishonesty to continue (and to accelerate) unchecked.
And this explains why Swinney cannot wash his hands of this crime. The criminality was able to happen because Sturgeon and Swinney said the crowdfunding money had not gone missing. By saying ‘nothing to see here’ about the ringfenced money, both Sturgeon and Swinney facilitated Murrell’s criminal behaviour.
