Joanna Cherry has called for an independent inquiry into how former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell was able to embezzle more than £400,000, and said Nicola Sturgeon showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about concerns over the party's finances.
Cherry told Radio Scotland Breakfast she wanted answers about why efforts to investigate allegations of financial mismanagement were frustrated by party chiefs. She said those efforts were blocked in “pretty unpleasant circumstances” and accused the party's leadership of treating people who asked questions as if they were the problem.
The exchange lands at a sensitive moment for the former first minister. Sturgeon was arrested during the police investigation into SNP finances but was later told she would face no further action. She has said she had no knowledge or suspicion whatsoever about Murrell's crime, and Cherry said her issue was not so much whether Sturgeon knew what was going on, but why she frustrated those who wanted scrutiny.
Cherry said she first raised concerns in 2019 over money donated to a ring-fenced fund set up by the SNP to raise money for a second independence referendum. She said the fund, which amounted to about £600,000, appeared to have been spent on other things. She also said Murrell was refusing to show the finance and audit committee the books and that questions put by the national executive committee were met with a brick wall.
The former SNP MP said she and a number of colleagues stood for election to senior party positions on a manifesto promising to get to the bottom of what had happened to the money and improve the party's internal governance. But she said the effort ran into resistance, and that in 2021 she resigned from the SNP's ruling body because of concerns about transparency.
Cherry also said some of the reason she was sacked from the SNP's frontbench team at Westminster in 2021 for unacceptable behaviour was tied to her questions about party finances. She said there had been very little transparency and that those who asked questions were treated as traitors to the party.
The dispute adds another layer to a saga that has already damaged the SNP's reputation for tight financial control. Cherry's call for an independent inquiry is now the clearest demand yet for a fresh look at how the party handled the money, and at why warnings raised years ago did not lead to action before Murrell's embezzlement became public.
