SNP MSP Christine Grahame has been censured by parliamentary authorities after she was found to have misused Holyrood resources during her election campaign.
Last night the Crown Office said it was considering whether any action would be taken against the convener of Holyrood's Justice Committee following an investigation by the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body.
Meanwhile, The Herald can reveal the Presiding Officer has written to Ms Grahame on behalf of the Corporate Body (SPCB) "conveying its strong disapproval" about her misuse of resources.
According to the SPCB, Ms Grahame breached the reimbursement of members' expenses scheme and the code of conduct for MSPs.
It did not uphold all the allegations made by her former employee, Mark Hirst, but found three emails indicated a misuse of resources.
A letter from the SPCB stated the emails "relate to significant party political activity which should not have been conducted using parliamentary resources". It went on: "On behalf of the SPCB, the Presiding Officer has written to Ms Grahame conveying its strong disapproval that she has misused parliamentary resources in this way and asking her to ensure that no further misuse of resource occurs."
Last night Ms Grahame put out a statement saying she was pleased the SPCB was taking no further action. However, the matter is now under consideration by the Crown Office and Lothian and Borders Police.
Earlier this year the Electoral Commission looked at the allegation but did not conduct what it calls a formal investigation. It referred some of the claims to the Crown Office.
The Standards Commissioner looked at Mr Hirst's allegations on November 8 and referred the allegations to the SPCB.
The Crown Office said: "Our Serious and Organised Crime Division has received information from the Electoral Commission in relation to a 67-year-old woman. The information remains under consideration."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article