Peter Murrell embezzlement trial

[Sunnnyday]

Peter Murrell is in court in Edinburgh today. This is for the preliminary hearing which was postponed from before the election. It will be interesting to see how the criminal proceedings proceed.

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/peter-murrell-arrives-at-court-ahead-of-hearing-on-embezzlement-charges/ar-AA23Ybuy?ocid=msedgntp&pc

@WearyAuldWumman I think 'homing in on young men at conferences and the like' is the tip of the iceberg. There are stories about booking exclusive use of the top floor of the Balmoral Hotel (that would run into the tens of thousands) for sex parties with very young men. You might wonder why he bought quite so many expensive watches and gaming sets - who were they for? You might also ask about the pipeline of young activists into SNP circles who later ended up getting convicted for sex and other offences. I don't think it was a a cosy, congenial, lavender marriage set-up at all, but rather cover for something that was potentially really sinister.

Interesting

I would have thought the fact that he has 3 nephews a more likely explanation for the games consoles.

I had no idea that Swinney and Murrell were childhood friends, nor that it was Swinney who appointed him CEO

Wild

He does like meeting people at conferences as they met at a youth conference, organised by Murrell, when NS was 18. He was six (I think) years older than her.

I sincerely hope that turns out to be the explanation.

It’s all very incestuous.

This is good, from Robin McAlpine: https://robinmcalpine.org/the-protection-racket-why-is-sturgeon-free-tonight/

It’s a bit like AMW , nobody knew , nobody saw anything, nobody suspected anything!!

someone or some people enabled his behaviour

Ooft - he doesn't hold back, does he? Quite right too, this is so murky. Just as we've come to expect from the SNP swamp really.

The world of Scottish politics is a pretty small one.

It really is.

Natalie McGarry, also convicted of embezzling from the SNP, had a couple of pretty high ranking SNP relatives, and a Tory councillor husband

Great article

Surely this controlling women would wonder why all this stuff was appearing - he earned about £100k which is not huge compared to his lifestyle. Those coffee makers are £££.

Did NS really go round with her eyes shut and her mouth closed which would be a first for her.

How is she managing to walk away from this? There is a video on you tube where she is saying nothing to see here, nothing wrong or untoward re SNP finances and all donations etc go towards Indyref it’s there captured on video.

Any other person would be in a cell…it beggars belief all this.

How can she get off Scot free! I knew it was odd when she stepped down as she’d never have done that …then lo and behold few months later this comes out the police investigation!

For someone who knew nothing about this, she knew an awful lot about what definitely, absolutely, 100%, so help me God was not happening.

Why would he risk everything to buy games consoles for nephews? I'm sure they would have been happy with a £10 voucher.

Chritmas gifts?

Consoles are a parent gift, not an uncle one

He didn’t see any risk in it. Why would he? He got away with it for over a decade. Looking at the list of items he clearly just saw the SNP funds as money to spend on his day-to-day life.

Had he not got greedy and stuck with £1k here and £2k there he’d most likely still be getting away with it.

Such bloody wrong uns a lavender cravat saying no comment in questioning they are just wrong and no way were they for nephews

Haha this really made me laugh!

What about this? He says that another £650K remains missing!

"After all that, we still don’t know where the £650,000 raised by the SNP for a referendum and used for another purpose went to. This is a totally different misappropriation of hundreds of thousands of pounds…"

What the....??! I have completely missed this - I thought there was 'only' £400-oddK missing?

Aye right Nicky knew nothing about this - pull the other one, it's got bells on.

I think with regard to the rest of the missing money that what actually happened was that money set aside for the referendum campaign was used for an election campaign instead. It's still misappropriation, however.