Peter Murrell embezzlement - Part 2

[Sunnnyday]

Feel free to post anything about corruption in Scottish politics, and related issues.

There's plenty of corruption at the top of the SNP. Remember this one from 2023, by an SNP minister?
Michael Matheson: Furore over £11,000 iPad bill 'completely blown out of all proportion', says shamed MSP | UK News | Sky News
Matheson said that the reaction to his basically trying to steal £11,000 from the taxpayer was overblown for political reasons. After doing everything he could to pretend that the bill had been incurred on constituency work, so that he could get the taxpayer to pay for his family's personal use of the iPad while abroad on holiday. His sons had been watching the football.
Here's an earlier stage of the scandal, when he was only asked to repay £3,000, out of his expenses budget (so he wouldn't have paid anything out of his own money), with the Scottish Parliament paying the extra £8,000:
Minister Michael Matheson racks up £11k roaming fee on parliament iPad - BBC News

The Scottish Parliament's Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, according to Wikipedia: "reported on 23 May 2024, recommending a 27-day ban from the Scottish Parliament, as well as Matheson's being withheld his salary as an MSP for 54 days. This was described as the toughest sanction ever recommended for an MSP. The First Minister, John Swinney, declared that he would not support the committee's recommended sanction, describing Matheson as a "friend and colleague" who had "made mistakes", and casting doubt on the integrity of the committee's process: describing the process as "prejudiced"". The SNP as a party abstained on the vote to sanction Matheson, as recommended by the committee.

Matheson, having resigned from his ministerial job, continued as an MSP until this year's Holyrood elections. He submitted an application to stand again, but it seems that his constituency wasn't very happy with the idea.

But please don't worry about him too much. He is apparently in gainful work connected to his political roles.

Apparently there’s more to come on Mr and Mrs Murrell!

Can you give us a hint?

This is from Wings over Scotland. They're threatening to bring legal proceedings for "fraudulent breach of trust". The argument is that the SNP asked for donations to spend on another independence referendum, said that the money would be used for that purpose only, kept on reiterating that, but are now admitting that it was spent on other things. I can't remember how much money this involves - is it something like £500,000?

Wings Over Scotland | scottish politics

Sorry, I can’t hint on the future developments, but the snippet came down to me from ‘much higher up’

If your spouse had been jailed for 5 years for embezzlement and there was a video in the public domain showing you, in your capacity as his boss, aggressively making the point not to ask questions about the finances of the organisation you jointly ran, would you think it was a good idea to be pictured out on the bevvy at Notting Hill and boogying at ABBA Voyage less than 2 weeks after he was sent to the Big House ?

I'm adding this link from the end of Thread 1, as it looks very interesting:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/0254b31f-d3cf-4a04-aadc-8b3400d32f00?shareToken=81b77c69755e18e0abc6f533af1409ac&ver=article

So there's allegedly over £1.5 million missing from the "Yes Scotland" campaign, which for legal reasons had to be separate from the SNP but according to the article had their books signed off by an SNP official. "Yes Scotland" say that the £1.5 million discrepancy in their accounts is due to them changing their accountants. Which seems a little odd... The police are apparently looking at the information they've been given on this.

Then in addition to that there's around £600,000 in SNP funds which was donated to pay for another Indy referendum, we were repeatedly told it had been ring-fenced for that, but John Swinney has recently said it was spent on other things. The police have so far declined to take action on that. Wings over Scotland are threatening to bring a civil (non-criminal) claim.

Reporting for duty!

Does anyone think we will ever get to the bottom of who decided that Sturgeon would/should not be investigated further? We’ve got the COPFS saying that Police Scotland did not propose charges (despite them having a case), and Police Scotland saying the COPFS told them not to bring charges.

Please tell me they will get her?

They are both full of shit. Shame on her! Of course she knew.

Unfortunately I don't think they will get her on anything. Murrell is sticking to his story that it was all him and she knew nothing. Senior party members are protecting her. She is cosy with the senior legal people. And if she were to be arrested, hauled into a parliamentary committee or whatever, she'd just do the "poor wee hard done by Nicola, betrayed by her one true love boo hoo" routine, and the rest of it would be "I don't recall".

@Womanofcustard give us a small hint? 😝

Here for the sleaze

A private sector employee who did that would be sacked.

Absolutely. It was a very clear gross misconduct offence. He'd have been sacked without notice and would probably not have been able to get another job. His employer would probably have reported him to the police and I imagine there's a good chance he'd have been prosecuted for fraud. Employers and the courts hate dishonesty. But because he was a politician, and in with the leadership, he was a "friend and colleague who made a mistake", and the SNP Wouldn't even agree to his losing less than 2 months' pay as a little punishment. He resigned as minister but stayed on as member of the Scottish Parliament. And after politics he's moved into a nice job on the Board of a company in an area that he was involved in in politics. I wonder whether he's behaving honestly and in accordance with the rules in that role?

https://x.com/Dr11Ums/status/2073732191972917652?s=20

I think most of us agreed at the time that the Michael Matheson thing was outrageous. If I remember correctly:

He had been told to hand in his government issued devices for updating - he didn't.

He was supposed to inform IT if taking government devices outside the UK - he didn't.

When asked about the massive bill he persisted for some time saying that it was for business use.

He then said it wasn't him watching the Old Firm match, it was his kids, and that the lies were to protect him.

Usual response from the SNP, slap on the wrist, naughty naughty, suspension for a short time, nothing to see here, move along.

And yet Matheson still feels that the "incident" was overblown and he was hard done by. The entitlement is through the roof.

Nicola Sturgeon in London. More evidence of an unhealthily friendly relationship with lawyers tasked with holding her to account:

"Her latest trip out comes just days after she was snapped enjoying a bottle of wine outside the exclusive Golborne Fine Wine and Deli in London’s Notting Hill with pal Mitchell — who previously cross-examined her at the Covid-19 inquiry."

This is the issue with SNP corruption- it has become normalised to get away with it

I think this one will be the bit that potentially brings the fall down of Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney.

If the angle is that Alex Salmond, because he was party leader at the time, was aware of how things were being done is proved then it then stands to reason that NS and JS would, as party leaders, have also known how things were done.

From what I’ve heard the issue is that they didn’t know Murrell was on the swindle, but they did know that he (like all senior SNP bods) effectively authorised their own expenses. So there were no checks done on Murrell, but also the bigger can of works is no checks done on others either.

given the Nicola McGarry thieving that was only flagged when Women for Independence realised she was stealing for them the suggestion that nobody’s expenses are actually checked stands to reason.

That I believe is also why Swinney is desperately trying to avoid an independent enquiry. It will show that there were no checks whatsoever on people spending money. The big fear is that Murrell is far from the only one who abused it, he just happens to be the one that got ridiculously greedy with the motorhome and outed himself.

Salmond is dead, teflon Nicky is gadding around London well away from Edinburgh, Humza Useless is out of parliament and being useless elsewhere, as is Michael "football on the ipad" Matheson. Swinney is persisting with the "nothing to see here, we definitely don't need an enquiry" line. He is the only one left around.

The whole thing is clearly rotten and goes much further than Murrell and his spending spree. The SNP grew from a niche party with very limited funds into something much bigger and better funded and they still throught they could manage their party in the same way as you might manage a playgroup or very small sports club. And wouldn't listen to anyone suggesting that their governance and management was obviously flawed.

Police Scotland sent a report to COPFS advising that after a thorough investigation PS believed there were no grounds for charging NS, and sought COPFS opinion. COPFS agreed there was no basis for charging her, and therefore there was no need for any further enquiries,

NS was investigated as part of Operation Branchform, and after that investigation both PS and COPFS concluded there was no "case" against NS. There is no need to consider whether to prosecute someone if there is no suggestion they committed any crime in the first place.

Fill yer boots -

https://www.copfs.gov.uk/publications/peter-murrell-prosecution-briefing/html/

Relevant parts -

On 9 August 2024, police submitted a request for advice and guidance concerning Nicola Sturgeon and Colin Beattie. This was not a report seeking the consideration of prosecution. Police did not charge and sought the Crown’s view on the evidence, and whether there were further enquiries required

The investigation by Police Scotland, together with the further investigation undertaken by COPFS, formed the basis of a report submitted to Crown Counsel by the COPFS team. That report ran to 542 pages and set out the evidence in detail

Having considered all of the material, Crown Counsel instructed that Peter Murrell should be prosecuted for embezzlement. Crown Counsel also agreed that Nicola Sturgeon and Colin Beattie should not be charged, and that no further enquiries were required in respect of them

As an additional safeguard, those conclusions were considered independently and separately by another KC, who reached the same view

So there is your "get to the bottom". Neither PS or COPFS ever believed there was any case for NS to answer, hence the lack of any charges made against her. Crown Counsel agreed with this view, and this was also corroborated by a second KC. Where this nonsense comes from that there was ever a case against NS, and that there was some sort of underhandedness in the decision not to prosecute her, is baffling, but not surprising since it's long been obvious that some people will continue to peddle this purely because of their pre-existing opinion of NS.

Kirsten Oswald is up to her neck in it too and she’s still in Holyrood.

Oh ffs. Matheson rightly went - ages ago. Wings is a nut job. Murrell is where he deserves to be. Nicola was cleared and doing other stuff. Can we just let the SNP get on with running the country please. They got voted back in, whether people on here like it or not.