Police Scotland Seem to be Incompetent Idiots.

[Diasi]

Police Scotland are taking an eternity to investigate if £660,000 raised solely for Indyref2 was spent on other things.

Well as an fraud ex-investigator, allow me to simplify it for you with these four easy steps.

1: The £600,000 was raised as donations for for Indyref2.
2:  Indyref2 has not yet been held.
3: The £600,000 cannot have been spent on Indyref2.
4: The £600,000 is no longer in the SNP's funds.

So there's your answer, I don't want paying for solving it for you, but a £1,000 donation to the animal charities I support would be nice.

https://yhoo.it/3LCgnkg

[Michael Rolls]

I can't understand why it is taking so long - but I am concerned at the noises being made by the SNP telling the police the think very carefully before contemplating arresting Nicola. Strange - the SNP audit committee (may not be the correct title, but near enough) comprised Murrell, Beattie and Sturgeon. The first two were arrested, questioned, and released without charge, but with investigations 'ongoing'. Why two out of three?

[Jacqueline]

Something stinks if she isn't arrested like the others, coverups not incompetence.

[klondike]

There's a lot of detail in Wikipedia about this in  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Branchform
About the only detail not included is where the money went and who was responsible.

Any suggestion that poor Nicola stood down because she knew that this shit storm was about to break is obviously just haters casting assertions.

[Michael Rolls]

but of course

[Diasi]

The main clue to point to fraud / theft happening is in the fact that the auditors resigned & the SNP can't get anyone else to do an audit.

[Michael Rolls]

hardly surprising

[1955vintage]

A bitter and twisted Englishman would compare the current mismanagement of the Scottish economy and SNP party finances and see a similarity to the Darien affair which lead to Scotland re-joining the UK 300+ years ago.

[Raven]

From what I see it's not Police Scotland who are dragging their heels. They have passed it on to The Crown Office, it's in their hands now.

https://news.stv.tv/politics/police-scotland-passes-snp-fraud-investigation-progress-report-to-crown-office-as-part-of-probe

[Alex]

The Crown office is part of the Scottish Government isn't it ?     Perhaps they should have asked PSNI to investigate or an English police force, although I imagine that would go down like a lead balloon-

[Diasi]

It's such a simple case to investigate it's almost laughable.

SNP supporters paid £600,000 pounds in donations to the SNP to be used for an Indyref2, on the promise that the money would be ring-fenced, so this money should have been put in a holding account to be used for that purpose.

If it was paid into the SNP's general expenditure account then that in itself can constitute fraud as donors may not have paid if they'd been told it would be used for general expenditure.

It's irrelevant what the money was spent on, the fraud is in the money no longer being in the SNP's bank.

[Cassandra]

It depends upon the investigations remit: The location of the funds would seem to be part of the SNP's annual audit and therefore its a matter of detailed forensic tracing to see how each remittance was coded in their ledgers and then registered in their financial returns. Was isolation of this £600k, ever undertaken, I suspect not.

There will be 'semantical variances' no doubt. For example can you justify a mobile home purchase as exclusively for use towards Independence referendum 2 and if so what are the justifications for it's speciality in that exclusive role etc. In other words 'partitioning' the £600k away from other general income and expenditure is probably a job MacBill doesn't want, or perhaps cannot even facilitate. Hence this becomes a pass the parcel case, until someone ends up with it's progression?

I expect it will kick about for a bit, get 'forgotten' and resigned to the 'awaiting further evidence' pile.

[Diasi]

It depends upon the investigations remit: The location of the funds would seem to be part of the SNP's annual audit and therefore its a matter of detailed forensic tracing to see how each remittance was coded in their ledgers and then registered in their financial returns. Was isolation of this £600k, ever undertaken, I suspect not.

There will be 'semantical variances' no doubt. For example can you justify a mobile home purchase as exclusively for use towards Independence referendum 2 and if so what are the justifications for it's speciality in that exclusive role etc. In other words 'partitioning' the £600k away from other general income and expenditure is probably a job MacBill doesn't want, or perhaps cannot even facilitate. Hence this becomes a pass the parcel case, until someone ends up with it's progression?

I expect it will kick about for a bit, get 'forgotten' and resigned to the 'awaiting further evidence' pile.

I have no doubt that the donors made the donations on the basis that the money, being ring-fenced as they were told, would be used for nothing other than to fund an actual live Indyref2.

However, I agree with your summation & suspect your last line is the way it will end.