Joanna Cherry KC had been a high-profile member of the SNP group at Westminster and was elected to the party’s national executive committee with a “mandate” from party members to probe what had happened to hundreds of thousands of pounds of cash donated to the party to help campaign for Scottish independence.
A police investigation into that cash culminated with former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell – also Ms Sturgeon’s estranged husband – pleading guilty to embezzling around £400,000 from the party.
Ms Cherry, who is no longer a member of the SNP, now wants to to see an independent investigation set up by the party – pointing out some of the cash it received is public funds.
The SNP relies on donations from both party members and Scottish independence supporters, she said, but it also received short money at Westminster – public cash which goes to help opposition parties.
Ms Cherry made clear she wants an “independent investigation into what occurred”, insisting there was a “wider public interest here that goes beyond the SNP”.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme, the former MP said: “I would like to see a properly independent inquiry into how this was allowed to happen and in particular 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.”
Her call came after Murrell, 61, pleaded guilty on Monday to embezzling a total of £400,310.65 from the SNP between August 2010 and October 2022.
The cash was used to buy a range of items, including a motorhome, various luxury goods and two cars. Other purchases included designer kitchenware, multiple pairs of shoes, expensive pens and a £1,200 space telescope.
Ms Sturgeon has already stated she had “no knowledge or suspicion whatsoever that personal items had been purchased using SNP funds”.
In a statement released through lawyer Aamer Anwar, the former first minister said she and Murrell had had separate bank accounts, and she had no access to his financial records.
“In relation to many of the items in question, for example expensive watches and games consoles, I was not aware of them having been purchased at all,” she said.
Adding that she and Murrell were “both earning high salaries”, Ms Sturgeon said: “In respect of any items I was aware of Peter having purchased, I had no reason to doubt that he had used his own money.”
She also stressed she was “cleared of any wrongdoing after a lengthy and thorough investigation” by Police Scotland.
Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said: “You would need to be a particularly gullible member of Nicola Sturgeon’s fan club to swallow her preposterous protestations of ignorance about her husband’s criminal racket.”
Ms Cherry 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.”
The former MP continued: “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?”
She told how members of the SNP’s finance and audit committee “found that Peter Murrell was refusing to show them the books” while she and other members of the party’s national executive committee “found any questions we asked were met with a brick wall”.
Ms Cherry recalled: “Rather than answering our questions and enabling us to do the job we had been elected to do, we were accused of trying to cause trouble, of being traitors to the party.”
Noting she had been sacked from the SNP’s frontbench team at Westminster in 2021 for “unacceptable behaviour”, she added: “Some of that unacceptable behaviour was the fact that I was asking questions behind the scenes about how the party was being managed, and in particular about how the party’s finances were being managed.”
SNP leader and Scottish First Minister John Swinney has already said “sorry to the people who are affected” by Murrell’s crimes, saying the money had been “stolen” from the party and accusing the former chief executive of “whole-scale deception”.
He added that the party had been “badly, badly, badly let down” by its former chief executive, with Mr Swinney saying on Monday that Murrell’s guilty plea was “an admission of a terrible breach of trust and an overwhelming betrayal”.