ALEX Salmond’s personal media company was almost drained of money last year, leaving it with its lowest reserves since it was founded in 2015.
Chronicles of Deer Ltd ended the year to 28 February 2021 with just £89 of profit and loss reserves, down from £62,535 the year before.
The firm’s cash in hand and at the bank also fell by more than £100,0000, from £104,457 in 2020 to £4,442 last year, according to accounts signed off today.
The accounts also suggest that Mr Salmond, who has previously taken money out of the firm as dividends, borrowed money from it for the first time
The new filing says that among the debtors is “an amount of £19,755 due to the company by a shareholder”, and Mr Salmond is the sole shareholder.
Mr Salmond last week suffered a blow to his finances and reputation when he was forced to suspend his weekly show on a pro-Putin TV channel after the invasion of Ukraine.
The slump in his company’s finances predates that, and coincides with him facing large legal bills after the criminal trial that saw him acquitted of sexual assault in March 2020.
The accounts for 2020/21 also cover the period when the former First Minister got ready to appear before the Holyrood committee into the so-called Salmond affair.
MSPs investigated how the Scottish Government had bungled an in-house probe into sexual misconduct claims against Mr Salmond, leading to him being awared £512,000 costs after he successfully challenged the Government’s procedure in a judicial review.
The months leading up to Mr Salmond going before the inquiry in February 2021 saw a stream of correspondence between the parliament and his lawyer, David McKie of Levy & McRae, about evidence, delays and the conditions for his appearance.
A regular complaint in the correspondence was that Mr Salmond was a private citizen who was being put to considerable expense by the drawn-out process.
In early 2021, Mr Salmond also set up his new party, Alba, ahead of the Holyrood election.
He donated £11,769 in cash to it himself but it failed to get a single MSP elected.
Chronicles of Deer Ltd was set up in February 2015 as a vehicle for the former SNP leader’s publishing income from his diary of the 2014 referendum and other writings.
In 2017, after Mr Salmond lost his Westminster seat to the Tories, he moved into television with his weekly show on RT and the firm had a new source of income.
However last week, Mr Salmond was forced to suspend the show in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The show is produced by another of his firms, Slainte Media Ltd, although this is largely owned by Mr Salmond’s business partner and co-presenter, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.
However Chronicles of Deer Ltd has Mr Salmond as its sole shareholder.
In its first five years, Chronicles of Deer had profit and loss reserves of between £24,368 and £154,892, making the £89 in its sixth year exceptional.
Likewise, the firm’s “cash at bank and in hand” had varied between £32,307 and £167,156 in its first five years, making the £4,442 of its six year another exception.
Previous accounts show Mr Salmond took dividends of £65,000 and £91,000 in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
Mr Salmond has been asked for comment.
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