The arrest of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon by Police Scotland investigating the funding and finances of the SNP is a sensational development that has sent shockwaves across the Scottish political establishment.
It follows a two-year inquiry by senior detectives at Police Scotland, assisted by officers from the National Crime Agency, into what’s become known as the “missing £600,000”.
This cash was raised by a crowdfunding effort by the SNP leadership, while she was party leader and first minister of Scotland, to pay for a campaign in an independence referendum. But the vote hasn’t taken place and the money is missing.
On Sunday, Sturgeon was being questioned in custody by detectives more than two months after her husband, Peter Murrell, was also arrested as a suspect.
Until Sunday, on the one occasion when she was asked about the police investigation, Sturgeon claimed that she had not been interviewed by the police. Police Scotland had never commented in any way on this claim.
Murrell had been the longstanding SNP chief executive until his resignation in March. His arrest came as squads of police carried out an exhaustive search of the couple’s home near Glasgow on April 5.
The intensity of their search, which included a forensic tent and large police van being parked in her front drive, led to complaints from the senior SNP officials and politicians that the police action had been a “grotesque circus”.
In what was seen as an angry response to such criticism, Police Scotland’s chief constable Sir Iain Livingstone delivered a stern hands-off message to the SNP – insisting that his officers would continue investigating without the distraction of political pressure from any direction.
However, the search of the Sturgeon address was speedily followed by officers seizing a £120,000 motorhome that had been parked in the driveway of the Fife home of Sturgeon’s mother-in-law.
As well as her husband being arrested, then freed pending further inquiries, the SNP’s treasurer Colin Beattie was also arrested and freed.
Those two, together with Sturgeon, had been the three signatories to the party’s annual accounts. And the fact that they had been arrested, while Sturgeon had not, had raised eyebrows throughout the Scottish legal and political establishment.
Almost exactly two years prior, Douglas Chapman MP – a former party treasurer – had tendered his resignation, complaining that he bad been prevented from seeing all the relevant papers concerning the missing funds.