SNP whistleblowers were 'intimidated' for raising finance concerns

Two whistleblowers said they were intimidated when trying to raise concerns about the SNP's finances during the period former chief executive Peter Murrell was stealing from the party.

Allison Graham and Cynthia Guthrie quit the party's finance and audit committee alongside Frank Ross after just six weeks in 2021, saying they had been blocked from carrying out their jobs.

In a joint resignation statement with Frank Ross, they said Murrell "obviously procrastinated" over giving them information and there was a "clear intention" to prevent financial auditing.

Murrell admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP over 12 years and was jailed for five years and three months earlier this week.

The 61-year-old – who is the estranged husband of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - used the funds to buy goods ranging from cars and a motorhome to kitchenware and toiletries.

Guthrie said that in 2021 she and her fellow committee members told Sturgeon they had noticed "problems with the accounts". She added: "She [Sturgeon] failed to follow it through."

Sturgeon was SNP party leader between 2014 and 2023 and in that role shared responsibility for monitoring the party's accounts.

However, she has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell's wrongdoing, committed between 2010 and 2022.

The former first minister was interviewed by police officers working on the Operation Branchform investigation but was not charged.

After becoming a member of the audit committee, Guthrie said she and her colleagues saw the party's financial management to be "chaotic" and "incompetent".

They were shown figures from the previous year at their first meeting in February 2021.

Graham, who previously represented Mid Scotland and Fife, said: "The figures themselves didn't add up. They were out by £1.51m."

Guthrie asked Murrell about membership numbers, but Graham said they were met with "so much distraction and filibustering".

She said they were consistently "stonewalled" while trying to understand the finances, which the committee had been asked to approve.

The national executive committee (NEC) is the SNP's governing body, and Graham was a member.

At one NEC meeting, Graham said she was "horrified" when a budget, which the finance committee, had not approved was shown, and passed.

She said she felt these meetings, led by then first minister Nicola Sturgeon, were often "deferential" to those more powerful in the party.

"You couldn't question the authority of the people in the leadership," she added.

She told BBC Scotland News: "I had no faith in any of the numbers I was shown, because once people lie to you about one thing, you start to question and want more evidence."

Guthrie said each of the three members had different reasons for resigning, but they collectively had a problem with how finances were organised.

"They were using us to give them a cloak of credibility and we're not doing it," she added.

Ross, Guthrie and Graham agreed on a joint statement saying they were unable to do their jobs as they were given "inadequate" information, which was due to "obvious procrastination by the CEO".

It added: "This has extended to ignoring our requests and simply failing to provide basic information which members of FAC require to be able to carry out our work.

"We can only conclude that there is a clear intention to prevent the FAC from doing its work for whatever reason."

This was read out by Graham at an online NEC meeting in March 2021.

Afterwards, she said she was "berated" by a councillor and the chat was flooded with support for him - including a message from Sturgeon which read: "Well said."

Graham said she found it "really intimidating" and that she received abuse when the video later leaked.

The leaked footage published by the Sunday Mail showed Sturgeon saying that the party had "never been in a stronger financial position than it is right now".

She added: "Just be very careful, all of us, about suggestions that there are problems with the party's finances because we depend on donors to donate.

"There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party's finances, and all of us need to be careful about not suggesting that there is."

After the "pile-on" at the meeting, Graham said her husband told her that she was "normalising bullying in front of our kids" since she was "being treated like that".

When asked what she thought happened to the ringfenced independence fund, Guthrie believes it was allowed to "seep into the accounts".

The two said that the SNP's lack of governance, curiosity, self-criticism, and structure encouraged Murrell to carry out his crimes.

"I think there are two ways of dealing with it," said Guthrie.

"You either grab it and you sort it, and I don't understand why John Swinney hasn't done that.

"At the moment it looks like a big cover-up - as if they woke up one day and discovered that the referendum money had been spent and that they started try to reassure everybody and say 'nothing to see here'."

She said this "totally enabled" Peter Murrell to embezzle the party.

Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP have been approached for comment.

At First Minister's Questions earlier, Swinney said the SNP was the victim of the embezzlement and apologised to members.

He has said there would not be an inquiry into Murrell's crimes, after it was rejected by the Scottish parliament.

Swinney previously said a probe could not provide more answers than the four-year police investigation into Murrell.

Sturgeon has repeatedly denied knowledge of her husband's crimes and said in her memoir Frankly that she was "shocked" when police raided her home in 2023. She has not been charged with any wrongdoing and was told in March last year she was no longer under investigation by police.

In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Sturgeon said: "I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed and I'm not going to apologise for somebody else's crimes."

Asked if she bore no responsibility at all despite her role, Sturgeon said: "No... [Murrell] perpetrated a crime on the SNP.

"By definition, that included me as the party leader. He misled. He deceived.

"He is serving and will be serving a sentence for a crime he committed. I'm out here feeling as if I'm serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit."