Nicola Sturgeon didn't know her husband stole £400,000

[Imdunfer]

Really? She lived with this guy and didn't know? She had a camper van parked on the drive and didn't know he stole the money to buy it?

I don't buy it.

AIBU

I'm not sure I would recognise Lalique on the kitchen table, I would probably think Oh, Lidl Middle's looking good! I would be suspicious though that OH had bought salt and pepper grinders at all.

Where do you go to buy a £2,400 salt and pepper set?
Surely salt is salt,
Bit like sugar its a mature product you don't get new and improved sugar or salt.

What about two £400 Advent Calendars? I think I'd wonder if the quality had got better than a chocolate button.

They would have had a combined income just south of £300k. With that level of income buying a £70k car or a £100k motorhome is not as big an expenditure as it would be to most of us.

Do we think he was lavishing these items on his friends and family? Was he selling them on for cash? All the gaming stuff sounds more like a teenage boy's wish list. And as for the coffee machines! How many of those would one need? Is it true that none of these items were found when the polic3 searched the properties?

I've read that he was buying stuff on Amazon to be sent direct to his family members and Nicola Sturgeon's family members.
As for the gaming stuff, I've seen dark suggestions about who he may have been buying those for.

I think the gaming stuff is his, more grown men game than you think.

The coffee machines I wondered if they'd been put in offices but then they'd be classed as SNP property.
Does he have a coffee business or restaurant on the side?

The coffee machines is a different level of weirdness

I guarantee they’ll get away with it by saying over and over that they don’t remember any money, don’t know where it came from, don’t know whose that is etc etc. The more audacious, the more you get away with, it seems.

Appreciating design and quality are together one thing.

Wanting very expensive designer-label items largely because they’re very expensive designer labels is another.

4 Nintendo DS's really who needs more than 1?
He must have been giving them away to other people.

Whoops you forgot to mention any Tories. Besides the covid corruption here's a taster -
Nadhim Zawahi fiddled his tax return paid a multimillion-pound penalty to settle his affairs. Think he was the one who claimed expenses for heating the stables or was it for clearing his moat?
Geoffrey Cox the former Attorney General had high-paying second jobs and failed to declare his stake in a tax avoidance scheme. He also notably voted remotely from a Caribbean tax haven while doing legal work for the British Virgin Iislands
Owen Patterson repeatedly lobbied ministers and officials on behalf of two companies paying him well over £100,000 a year. The list goes on...

I cannot believe that she knew nothing. The party treasurer resigned, along with half of the accounts staff, as they sad there was fraud. Nicola then signed off on them.

As if that were not enough, she went at anyone who questioned it like a pit bull.

Her hands may look clean, Murrel has gone down and taken the full rap, presumably with a sweetheart deal to be looked after, for keeping schtum.

Of course she knew.
I don't believe for a second she didn't know.

Is this a mobile home that I see before me ...

The 2 washing up bowls did it for me. How many men in that age group would be buying washing up bowls

I think it would be more likely the other way round.

He wanted power, but never had the political clout himself. He aligned himself with Salmond very early on and then with Sturgeon from when she was young (and she was always tipped to rise).
He helped her into position and that gave him extra clout in his own position and, along with his long term link with Salmond, that extra power beyond the usual scope of the CEO.

Not normal washing bowls surely, but designer ones Lalique inspired

I wonder if SOAS went ahead with their conversation with Nicola Sturgeon last week given the circumstances. What were they thinking of inviting her to speak to a bunch of university students?

https://www.soas.ac.uk/about/event/frankly-conversation-nicola-sturgeon

Did I also read somewhere that he purchased hairdryers? The man is as bald as coot.

As Private Fraser said "The man's mad"

I thought I was being a bit extravagant by buying le cruset salt and pepper pots but over 2 grand for something so mundane, blimey! She must have known.

Yes, I would agree that was part of it too. The suspicion about this arrangement is how closed it is, and how everyone benefitted but somehow seemed not to know.

Ian Murray is a Labour politician.

I think that either Murrell had gained enough clout that nobody knew because nobody checked his credit card or invoices. They just paid them.

Or everyone around him knew that he used the business funds and didn’t bat an eyelid - most likely because of the culture meaning they all did it. Murrell just got greedy and it was traceable once the cookie crumbled.

Given Natalie McGarry’s thieving I’m inclined to think it was the latter. Nobody did anything for donkeys years because they all did it. Only once the journalist flagged that Murrell had got greedy (and silly in terms of traceability) did others start to raise flags - most likely to protect themselves rather than out of genuine concern.

I think there is the possibility that Nicola Sturgeon didn’t know, but this probably means she didn’t really have much of a marriage more of a business relationship (not necessarily anyone’s business) and more damningly she didn’t do her job properly when signing off the accounts and defending them. I think it’s fair to say that she should have made enquiries as one of the people responsible.

There is also the possibility that she knew, it’s just that there isn’t evidence that she knew, so she cannot be charged.

In either way, best case scenario is that she is somewhat negligent and really doesn’t correspond to the picture that she presented all those years.