WENDY Alexander and members of her campaign team are facing a raft of investigations after they admitted breaking UK funding laws.

Labour's Holyrood leader and her colleagues will be bogged down for months if inquiries are launched by the Electoral Commission and the police.

Some could face prison if convicted.

The nightmare situation for Alexander follows her campaign team's admission that they received an illegal £950 donation from tycoon Paul Green, a tax exile who lives in Jersey. The MSP who solicited the cash, Charlie Gordon, is likely to face a grilling by Electoral Commission bosses over why he solicited such a donation from a tax exile. Gordon will be called on to explain why he believed the donation had been made through UK company Combined Property Services (CPS).

He is likely to be asked about what led to him making this assumption, given that it has been comprehensively rubbished by Green and CPS.

It is illegal to facilitate the making of donations by impermissible donors, a penalty punishable by a year in prison.

Alexander is also facing investigation after it appeared that she, too, breached electoral law. As a "regulated donee" in her campaign, she is required by law to return any illegal donation within 30 days. This time period has elapsed.

Alexander and her aides are likely to be asked for precise details of when they knew there were legal problems about the donation. She may be asked for the "paper trail" surrounding the donation.

Her campaign may also have broken funding rules by apparently "switching" the name of another one of their donors. The campaign list states Moir Lockhead, chief executive of First Group, contributed £995, but another column shows the name given to the Electoral Commission was "John Lyons", a one-time consultant to the company.

Electoral Commission rules state: "Transferring a donation to an agent rather than directly to a donee must not be used as an attempt to evade the controls on permissibility and transparency."

If this donation was made by Lyons, Alexander's campaign team will face searching questions on why the name was switched.

A spokeswoman for the Electoral Commission confirmed: "We have written to her Wendy Alexander about donations received by the campaign."