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

Likewise the ex London chief fire officer who claimed she couldn't remember things from the night of the Grenfell fire! Funny how loads of low level firefighters and control room staff could remember lots of detail, yet the highly paid chief fire officer couldn't!! It's a real "get out of jail" card for these over-paid, over-promoted people.

Useful timeline

Operation Branchform timeline: The downfall of ex-SNP chief executive Peter Murrell | UK News | Sky News https://news.sky.com/story/operation-branchform-timeline-the-downfall-of-ex-snp-chief-executive-peter-murrell-13546737

From the BBC interview

“What we did at that point was spend significant time and there was a communication issued, I don't know if it was the one you referred to by the National Treasurer at the time, explaining how the 600,000 pounds was handled within the party's accounts, that it was all coded as being for the independence referendum and it was used on a cash flow basis. So we did take steps to try to explain exactly what the answers were to those concerns”

She doesn’t seem to realise that no amount of coding can make money available if it has already been spent.

Not sure what she means by “cash flow basis”. Perhaps ‘“we needed cash so we spent it”.

The cash flowed from the SNP's account into Murrell's? Sorry, it was there for the taking is what he said 😂

They really did muddy the waters. If I understand correctly, two large sums of money went AWOL: one lot was supposedly spent on election campaigning when it should have been set aside for a referendum, but the party leadership tried to insist that that was okay, and the other lot was spent by Murrell.

@WearyAuldWumman Yes. 600k set aside for Indy Ref spent on electioneering. 400k stolen by PM (who had form apparently, stealing ftom Salmond in the past). NS should have known that both the 600k and the 400k amounts weren't being used properly. Yet she was more than unaware, she chased out those who asked Qus (Joanna Cherry). She told SNP party members not to ask questions. She knew auditors and accountants were resigning. She most certainly knew something wasn't right. She refused to help the Police. And in her LK interview there was no mention of rhe public & party members money. Just 'it was parked round rhe back' and 'bad man, poor me'. I hope someone brings a private prosecution.

This sums it up in a nutshell.

She really didn't address anything much during the LK interview, apart from trying to portray herself as a complete victim in it all and absolutely blameless in the process.

This is what rankles.

I actually accept that she wasn't in on cooking the books with her husband.
But I do not accept that she governed her party with due care and diligence and the financial misappropriation of funds under her watch is astonishing.

She showed no understanding of the wider implications of what she is being accused of when she was FM. Under her watch there were numerous resignations due to mishandling of finances and those responsible for sign off refusing to do so. The fact that she was captain of the ship at that time makes her responsible for the finances of the party and the checks and balances therein.

In one instance she even signed the party's accounts when the person responsible for doing so refused to as they were unhappy with the figures.

She is not accepting any responsibility whatsoever for this and that is just plain wrong.

Her reputation is damaged beyond repair and her legacy trashed beyond redemption. But she is still portraying herself as the victim in all of this without recognising that she played a big part in allowing the finances to be so grossly wrong even when others were pointing out inaccuracies within them.

Her husband even had to put in £100k of his own money to balance the books. This should have screamed alarm bells since hundreds of thousands should have been in the bank account that had been raised from donations. Where had the money gone Nicola? Surely this raised serious questions.

No company director could just plead innocence in all of this and neither can she.

But oh the irony that she presented constant financial facts stating that an independent Scotland could stand on its own two feet without any money from Westminster. This was a financial lie as well in the extreme.

But she couldn't even run the party finances accurately and with due diligence. Just imagine the utter shambles if the SNP had been allowed to govern an independent Scotland handling all their financial affairs.

Not defending his embezzlement or her lack of curiosity, but: 1. The money was apparently taken over 12 years, so approx. 40k per year. A hefty sum, but not massive, and he was receiving a big salary and could well have had various other business interests that might have been cover. 2. She was quite busy running a country and being leader of a party at the time. A new salt cellar appears in the kitchen - so what? A motorhome on the driveway - my investments have done well. Etc.

It is certainly odd, but let's not forget that she is not the convicted party here. I also think she did a very good job as first minister.

Because Sturgeon bullied people into silence when they raised concerns about the finances of the SNP.

Leading the party he was embezzling funds from. They should have had systems and processes in place to prevent what he did as far as possible and, where not possible, to detect it before it had gone on for 12 years. It's not simply a case of, 'she was so busy with her big job, she can't possibly be expected to notice every pen he buys', it was actually part of her big job to pay attention to the party finances, especially when she signed off on the accounts because the person who should have done it refused. And I would be very surprised if the £400k is all of it, more like it was what the police felt they had enough evidence for, so there was likely a lot more to be noticed too.

Before the investigation into embezzlement, Nicola gave me the impression of sweeping things under the carpet - in a 'nothing to see here' way. The way she chose to deal with the Chief Medical Officer by Calderwood just not appearing at the press updates - until there was an outcry. The "I don't recall" x 50 over Salmond. And then once there was the recent investigation and she chose to say "no comment" for a few hours to the police.

I'm happy to believe that she believed what she wanted to believe about her husband. Plenty of women have been lied to by their husband.

I'm less happy to excuse the lack of interest in financial controls when the SNP was essentially spending other people's money. Perhaps she didn't notice the camper van on her MIL's driveway, but somebody should have noticed that the camper van apparently owned by the SNP had gone AWOL and her explanation of the expenditure of the £600k doesn't make senses. You can't ring fence money for future expendure when it has already been spent.

There are discrepancies in the books that still haven't been explained.

However, this isn't just a Nicola Sturgeon problem.

I heard a commentator saying that the guy who paid Farage that 5 mil was so very rich it would hardly have registered-it would have been like one of us noticing someone we know posting a charity Just Giving on FB and bunging them 50 quid. Sturgeon and Murrell were very rich and I can actually imagine that she didn’t know.

I heard on the radio that she was very cagey about accounts to the extent there were resignations as people weren’t comfortable about it, but I was only half listening so happy to be corrected.

People resigned because they weren't allowed to see all the financial records. That included the company which was supposed to audit the books.

I have no sympathy for Nicola Sturgeon and frankly I’m appalled at the SNP strategy to make out that it’s only Nicola and the SNP who are the victims of Peter Murrell.

There’s no sense that they understand the magnitude of this in terms of systems failure, loss of trust in politicians and governance and the damage done to Scotland’s reputation as a whole.

Nicola Sturgeon has led a life of extreme privilege and protection since her 20s when she became Salmond’s protege.

She might pretend to be a working class girl but she came across in the Laura Kuenssberg interview as supremely arrogant, impatient, completely lacking in self awareness and totally out of touch with reality.

The vast majority of Scots who are struggling financially would certainly be able to spot the cost of a Jaguar even if they couldn’t drive and had no interest in cars.

As for being high earners, up to a point, but neither of them were making anything like the amount a senior partner in a law firm in Edinburgh makes.

Look at the financial shenanigans relating to the Ferries.
There’s a pattern here which doesn’t take a genius to figure out.
As a body, the SNP is financially illiterate.

I very much dislike Nicola playing the ‘woman’ card.
She’s treated women with utter disdain.
(I’m referring to the genuine concern over single sex spaces.)

Swinney and the SNP are supposed to be governing Scotland and instead they are immersed in one cock up after another, taking up valuable time trying to cover up their mistakes and sending the minions out to various media outlets to parrot the party line.
Swinney is up to his neck in this too.

I might not share her politics, but I have a ton of respect for Joanna Cherry.
How she’s still standing, I don’t know.

The problem with this argument is that Sturgeon was ultimately responsible for signing off on the SNP accounts. In fact, as a solicitor she has formal training on this so cannot plead ignorance.

How could she not notice a 600K deficit?

Why did her husband bung in 100K?

Why did she ignore warnings from others who refused to sign off the accounts?

Why did she not notice the camper van on the books and go WTF?

Why did she front a campaign for ring fenced money but not understand that money disappearing is the opposite of ring fencing?

How does she account for the additional 200K missing?

Why did she tell the public she was fully transparent with the police but it transpired that she refused to answer their questions for several hours?

Where is the written report she claimed to send to the police?

These are just some of the questions Sturgeon seems to have no memory of or knowledge about. And yet she was competent to lead a country?

Sorry but the whole thing stinks and she needs to face trial otherwise Scotland’s whole political and legal system becomes a bigger joke than it already is.

She spent a lot of lockdown bashing Boris Johnson but it turns out she’s a bigger chancer than he is. He’s an amateur in comparison to Sturgeon.

Stinking liar, rotten to the core.

Quite.

And listening to her play the ‘oh I’m the victim of a man. Poor me! It’s so sad! I’m such a victim’. When she’s been prepared to put men, including rapists, into women’s prisons, is frankly sickening. Those women are the victims. Of her. They are the victims of NS’s complete lack of principle, concern for women and political cynicism.

She is now exposed as the naked emporer she always was.

She is a deeply unpleasant, manipulative and unprincipled woman. Her main principle was meant to be nationalism and even that was shite as she has pissed off to live in London. Under English rule!

She is a deeply unpleasant, manipulative and unprincipled woman. Her main principle was meant to be nationalism and even that was shite as she has pissed off to live in London. Under English rule!

It does somewhat beggar belief that she has now chosen to live in London to escape the interest and in an attempt to live under the radar for a while. Surely somewhere in Scotland would have been suitable, but obviously not for Nicola?

Oh again the irony of wanting desperately to have an independent Scotland that she claimed to love so much. Then she buggers off to London when the going gets tough instead of toughening it out in the land she loves so very much!

She certainly is a lass of many contradictions - perhaps the biggest being those of a financial nature.

To be honest, the same could be said for a few former SNP politicians.

You watch. She is trying to refashion herself as part of the London commentary set, making a living from her political past.

England does not need washed up Scots nationalists. What nasty perspective will she bring to the country? We have our own nationalistic idiots

It does somewhat beggar belief that she has now chosen to live in London to escape the interest and in an attempt to live under the radar for a while. Surely somewhere in Scotland would have been suitable, but obviously not for Nicola?

I think she imagines herself as hotly in demand by everyone from the EU to the UN and everything in between. Thought she'd line up a nice wee job as head of some campaigning organisation which would allow her to continue gadding around pretending to be presidential but not doing any actual work.

Fuck all chance of that now though.

Actually she’s a no mark failure isn’t she? I imagine she’s been pitching for a serious political job for years. Given her nationalism, lack of contacts and influence with the British Government that she spent her time alienating, no international entity will be interested, still less anyone in Westminster which she spent her career publicly disparaging. Getting these jobs means showing you can build relationships not destroy them

Why do you think, during Cop20 in Glasgow in November 2020, when the city was still locked down, kids masked up in schools, hospitality closed, the bold Nicola was getting so many pictures with world leaders that #ElsieMcSelfie was trending on social media?