The auditors to the pro-independence Scottish National party resigned about six months ago and Scotland’s governing party is yet to appoint a replacement, raising fresh questions about its governance and finances.
The SNP’s recently elected leader and first minister Humza Yousaf said on Tuesday that auditors Johnston Carmichael had stopped working with the party around October last year.
The accountancy firm’s resignation became public only last week, following the arrest by police of former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, the husband of ex-first minister Nicola Sturgeon, as a suspect in an “ongoing investigation into the party’s funding and finances”. Murrell was released without charge pending further investigation after more than 11 hours in police custody.
Yousaf said the SNP was “working very hard” to find new auditors but acknowledged that it would be “challenging” for the SNP to file its accounts by July as required by the Electoral Commission.
Political opponents seized on Yousaf’s comments, saying they raised new questions about the circumstances behind Sturgeon’s resignation in February as well as broader concerns about the SNP’s transparency.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour deputy leader, said the “plot” had thickened given Yousaf’s statement about when the auditors had quit. “That the SNP did not come clean about this for months stinks to high heavens,” she said.
Scottish police have been investigating the SNP since 2021 after complaints from donors who claimed that money given to the party during special independence referendum fundraising appeals in 2017 and 2019 had been spent on other things. The SNP has said all its activities are dedicated to the cause of independence.
The party has also faced questions about a £107,620 loan Murrell made to the SNP in 2021 “for working capital purposes”.
The SNP said last week that Johnston Carmichael had told the party it was resigning “following a review of our client portfolio and existing resources and commitments” but did not provide a timeline.
The party also declined to provide a fuller explanation for the auditors’ resignation nor whether any problems had been identified in its accounts.
Yousaf said on Tuesday that he first found out about the auditors’ resignation when he became party leader at the end of March. Johnston Carmichael said: “As a regulated organisation, we adhere to our obligations on client confidentiality and do not discuss client business.”
The Electoral Commission said the SNP had told it about Johnston Carmichael’s resignation but that the appointment of auditors was “an internal party matter”.
The commission added: “If the party were to miss the deadline for reporting their statement of accounts we would consider that under our usual processes.”
Ruth Davidson, former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, posed a series of questions on Twitter about the auditors’ departure, including whether Sturgeon knew about the decision before her surprise resignation announcement in February. “Did Nicola know in real time?” Davidson asked.
Credit: Source link
