JOHN Swinney has insisted the SNP have rebuilt trust with voters as he batted away calls for an inquiry into how Peter Murrell was able to embezzle more than £400,000 from the party.
The First Minister said that there was no need for a fresh probe because there was no higher standard of investigation than that undertaken by the police.
His comments came as calls for an inquiry, which the First Minister has already rejected, were backed by a senior Labour minister.
While the police investigation examined Murrell’s criminal activity, the SNP continue to face questions about how the former chief executive was able to get away with his crimes for so long.
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday Show, Swinney said: “We know exactly what happened, we know there was a criminal act perpetrated by Peter Murrell and he went to extraordinary lengths, as the police statement said, to cover his tracks and to deceive everyone around about him.
“So we know what happened and you can’t actually get a standard of investigation any higher in Scotland than a forensic police investigation that results in a successful High Court prosecution and a guilty plea.”
Host Laura Goodwin said: “We know what happened in a criminal sense but what about whether, was Peter Murrell a criminal mastermind or were things not spotted? And is there any harm in allowing an independent inquiry to look at that? What cost is it to you?”
The First Minister said that he had “worked hard” to rebuild trust between the electorate and his party and that the results of the recent election, which saw the SNP returned to power for a historic fifth term, proved this.
He said: “The issues of trust, I think, have been explored pretty extensively in the last few years where all of these issues about the issues in relation to the SNP’s finances have been well-advertised and well communicated in the public media, they have not been a surprise to people that there was some issues that were being aired here.
“And three weeks ago we had an election in which the SNP came out with 38% of the vote and 58 MSPs in the Scottish Parliament. Now I think that came about because I openly confronted the issue of trust within the electorate and worked hard to rebuild the relationship of trust between the people of Scotland and the SNP.”
Murrell last week admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP while he was chief executive.
For most of the time he was defrauding the party, his now estranged wife Nicola Sturgeon was first minister.
On Sunday, she gave her first television interview since Murrell’s guilty plea and insisted she had harboured no suspicions about her husband’s extravagant spending.
Sturgeon said: “We were two people on high salaries, we don’t have children, we didn’t have an extensive social life, mainly because of the pressures of my job, we very rarely went on holiday, so we had incomes that would, as far as I could see, would have supported anything that I was seeing in my house.”
Speaking on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: “You have a marriage, and that was discussed a lot in the interview, but you also have the role of a political leader.
“And the SNP have been the dominant force in Scottish politics for 20 years, and that dominance has extended not just to politics but to society and culture, and it has been protected by a claim to virtue, which is often denied to those elsewhere in the UK, particularly to England.
“And I think that this culture and this claim to virtue has surrounded itself with control and secrecy, and that means that when these scandals hit – and the SNP is not the only party to be hit by a scandal, I should make that clear – the only way through it is full transparency.”
Alex Cole-Hamilton, leader of the Scottish LibDems, added: "Both Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney were spinning that the SNP’s finances were in good shape instead of asking hard questions about what was going on. Unnamed SNP sources were trying to explain away the use of the camper van as a legitimate resource in the same week it was seized by police.
“It was a catastrophic failure of financial oversight.
“John Swinney is wrong to try and block a parliamentary inquiry. The unanswered questions are eroding trust in our politics. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Why are SNP backbenchers still happy to just sit quietly and not ask questions?"
