SNP treasurer Colin Beattie has been arrested by police investigating the party’s finances.
Mr Beattie, 71, has been taken into custody and is being questioned by Police Scotland detectives.
A spokesman for the force said the arrest was made in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances of the SNP.
It comes two weeks after former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell – Nicola Sturgeon’s husband – was also arrested.
Officers spent two days searching the Glasgow home of Mr Murrell and Ms Sturgeon, and the party’s headquarters in Edinburgh.
A luxury motorhome was seized by officers from outside a property in Dunfermline on the same morning that Mr Murrell was arrested.
The Mail on Sunday reported that the vehicle had been parked outside the home of Mr Murrell’s 92-year-old mother since January 2021.
Mr Murrell was later released without charge pending further investigation.
Mr Beattie is the MSP for the Midlothian North and Musselburgh constituency.
He served as the SNP’s treasurer for 16 years before being defeated in an internal election by Douglas Chapman in 2020, but returned to the role when Mr Chapman resigned a year later.
Mr Chapman quit after saying he had “not received the support or financial information” that was needed to carry out his duties as treasurer.
Police Scotland launched a formal investigation into the SNP’s finances in July 2021 after receiving complaints about how donations were used.
The SNP raised a total of £666,953 through referendum-related appeals between 2017 and 2020. The party pledged to spend these funds on the independence campaign.
Questions were raised after its accounts showed it had just under £97,000 in the bank at the end of 2019, and total net assets of about £272,000.
Last year it emerged Mr Murrell gave a loan of more than £100,000 to the SNP to help it out with a “cash flow” issue after the last election.
The SNP had repaid about half of the money by October of that year.
On Sunday, leaked video footage emerged that showed Ms Sturgeon – the former SNP leader and first minister – playing down fears about the party’s finances.
The footage, published by the Sunday Mail, is said to be from a virtual meeting of the party’s ruling body in March 2021.
Ms Sturgeon told National Executive Committee (NEC) members the party’s finances had never been stronger and warned of the impact of going public with concerns.
Source – BBC News
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