SNP hierarchy under pressure to reveal Murrell secrets – Daily Business

Colin Beattie: declined to answer media questions

Pressure remains on those close to Peter Murrell and the SNP’s finances to reveal what they knew about the party’s former chief executive who is in custody awaiting a lengthy prison term for embezzlement.

He pleaded guilty on Monday embezzling £400,310.65 from the party and spending it on luxury items. He is likely to receive a sentence of between four and six years behind bars.

First Minister John Swinney and Murrell’s estranged wife and former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have already expressed their disgust and dismay over Murrell’s crimes.

However, they have refused to elaborate on how much they knew despite rumours circulating for years about missing funds.

Colin Beattie, who was treasurer for most of Murrell’s time in office – 2001 to 2023 – today declined to comment when questioned by reporters at Holyrood.

Mr Beattie, who is MSP for Midlothian North, served as treasurer from 2004 and 2020 and again for a short period until he was arrested in April 2023. He was questioned and released without charge.

Nicola Sturgeon and now ex-husband Peter Murrell

In the parliament today, and despite being able to comment now that Murrell pleaded guilty, he would only say “it is probably inappropriate for me to comment at this particular time. Obviously I am pleased that we have got to the point that we have, but we just need to wait until after the sentence and so on.”

He also declined to apologise to members who made donations and dodged questions about whether he should have spotted what was going on while he was in a position to monitor the party’s finances.

Douglas Chapman, who beat Mr Beattie in an election for treasurer in 2020, pledged to improve transparency in SNP finances, but remained in post for only five months. He claimed Murrell had refused to show him the party’s books.

The NEC has responsibility for scrutinising the party’s books, while the accounts are independently audited by external auditors and are then submitted to the Electoral Commission. Despite this process Murrell’s embezzlement went unnoticed.

Former SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who resigned from the NEC in 2021 over concerns about transparency, has called for an independent inquiry to establish how Murrell was able to siphon off £400,000 from a fund intended to support an independence campaign.

Joanna Cherry: fired after asking questions (pic: DB Media Services)

She said: “I would like to see a properly independent inquiry into how this was allowed to happen and in particular into why the efforts of those of us who were elected to get to the bottom of the party’s governance and financial mismanagement were frustrated from doing so, and frustrated from doing so in pretty unpleasant circumstances.”

She added: “It wasn’t just that we didn’t get an answer to our questions – we were demonised for asking the questions and one by one we all resigned from the national executive committee.

“There just seemed to be a remarkable lack of curiosity on the part of Nicola Sturgeon and other members of the national executive committee at that time – some of whom are now members of the Scottish Parliament and I think they have questions to answer as well.”

Ms Cherry said she had first raised concerns in 2019 over money that had been donated to a ring-fenced fund for a second independence referendum. She said the fund, amounting to about £600,000, “appeared to have been spent on other things”.

The former MP said she and a number of colleagues had stood for election to senior positions within the SNP “on a specific manifesto of getting to the bottom of what had happened to that money and also improving the internal governance of the party”.

However, “Nicola Sturgeon ran that party with a rod of iron, hand and glove with her husband,” she said. “There was very little transparency and those of us who asked questions were treated as traitors to the party.”

Ms Cherry claimed her colleagues on the finance and audit committee found that Murrell was “refusing to show them the books”.

She was sacked from the SNP’s frontbench team at Westminster in 2021 for “unacceptable behaviour” and said some of that related to her questions about party finances.

The former MP said: “Nicola Sturgeon is very keen to paint herself as the victim here and to underline she is not guilty of any criminality.

“But what she is guilty of is a remarkable lack of curiosity and deliberate frustration of the attempts of those of us who were curious.

“My issue is not so much whether she knew what was going on, my issue is why did she frustrate the attempts of those of us who were elected to do the job of financial scrutiny within the party?”

Murrell used the money he took to buy items including a luxury motorhome, two cars and other luxury goods between between August 2010, just weeks after he married Ms Sturgeon, and October 2022.

Mr Swinney today told MSPs in parliament that the wrongdoing was the responsibility “of Peter Murrell, and Peter Murrell alone.” 

See also

Crown urged to reveal why Sturgeon not charged

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