A former independent councillor who donated money to the “ring-fenced” indyref2 crowdfunder has told how he feels “conned” after John Swinney admitted the SNP spent the cash.
Michael Breslin and his wife were not SNP members when he claims they gave £150 to the fundraiser, which raised £667,000 for a future referendum campaign between 2017 and 2019.
It later emerged the cash was missing from party accounts, sparking the Operation Branchform police probe that led to Peter Murrell’s £400,000 embezzlement conviction.
Asked last month what had happened to the £667,000 fund, the First Minister conceded the money had been spent on SNP day-to-day costs, arguing it was “part of the resources available within the Scottish National Party to support its independence objectives”.
But ex-Dunoon councillor Breslin, 73, said this is a “completely false argument” as the crowdfunder was open to all independence supporters, not just SNP members.
He told the Sunday Mail: “I do feel aggrieved. I think we’ve been conned and I think that what’s happened here is legally fraud. Yes, the SNP is always supposed to be about independence… but it did say it was ring-fenced funding for a future independence referendum.
View 2 ImagesJohn Swinney has refused to back an inquiry into the Murrell scandal(Image: PA)
“That changes the legal nature of the donation. It meant that I was giving in the false hope that it would be ring-fenced, and the party asking for the money is giving you a commitment it will be ring-fenced. I did it in good faith. They acted in bad faith.”
It comes as Murrell, 61, will be sentenced on Tuesday at the High Court in Edinburgh after pleading guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Murrell, who was SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023 and married Nicola Sturgeon in 2010, used party funds to illicitly purchase luxury goods, jewellery, cosmetics, two cars and a motorhome.
But the five-year, £2million police investigation that eventually nailed Murrell initially began as a probe into more than £600,000 raised by the indyref2 crowdfunding campaign which was missing from SNP accounts, as first revealed by the Sunday Mail in 2021.
In light of Swinney’s admission that the money is spent, Breslin wants the cops to reinvestigate the disappearance of the ring-fenced cash and would back a class action for those, like him, who lost money.
So far, cops have declined to reopen the investigation. Swinney is also under mounting pressure to launch an independent inquiry into the scandal. Breslin said when questions arose over the missing fund, he asked for his money back but was told by the SNP they had no record of his 2017 donation.
He said: “My view is that the police ought to investigate this again afresh because of what Swinney has admitted to. The standards of governance and accounting and a whole pile of other things are just so poor that I have not voted SNP since 2021.
“It’s a point of principle because I don’t think they deserved my vote – and there’s more to it than just money. The culture was rotten. That’s why I left the SNP. For me to ever go back, there would need to be a root-and-branch reform of the whole party and I’d need to see the back of a number of people who are senior figures in the party.”
Asked if that included Swinney, Breslin replied: “Yes, without question. If he wasn’t part of all this nonsense, then he certainly must have been aware of it.”
We previously told how donors are considering legal action against Sturgeon, who fronted the fundraising campaign after vowing to hold an indy vote in 2017.
Sturgeon, SNP leader and First Minister from 2014-2023 while her fraudster husband was party CEO, was arrested by cops but released without charge during the Branchform investigation.
Breslin was elected SNP councillor for Dunoon in Argyll and Bute in 2012. However, he quit the party a year later over the Nationalist-led council’s move to close a local care home.
He served the rest of his term as an independent. Breslin rejoined the SNP in 2019 but quit again in 2022, over the missing indyref2 cash and wider disillusionment.
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