NICOLA Sturgeon told a meeting of the SNP’s ruling NEC that the party’s finances were “absolutely fine” despite concerns over more than £660,000 worth of donations, according to reports. 

The Sunday Mail says that in August 2021, a month after police launched a probe into the party's finances, the former first minister said: “We don’t need to talk about the finances. The finances are absolutely fine.”

Questions were initially raised about the money after SNP accounts in 2019, showed £97,000 in the bank and total assets of about £272,000, despite hundreds of thousands being raised through online fundraisers. 

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The meeting also came three months after MP Douglas Chapman quit as treasurer saying he “had not received the support or financial information required to carry out the fiduciary duties”.

A month after that resignation, Ms Sturgeon's husband and the then SNP chief executive Peter Murrell loaned the party more than £107,620, though it was not declared to the Electoral Commission until August 2022, more than a year late.

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The body was discussing a report, commissioned by deputy leader Keith Brown after the financial concerns were first raised. 

In the final paragraph, he said transparency could be increased if the party prepared a “monthly written summary of income and expenditure, confirmed via the bank account.”

A party source told the paper: “[Ms Sturgeon told the meeting that there was nothing wrong with the accounts and that people should stop talking about it because it was undermining the party.

"It’s fair to say she was pretty raging about it. She went on at some length telling everyone that everything was absolutely fine and that it shouldn’t be discussed.”

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Unusually, the meeting, which took place on Zoom, was recorded.

Another attendee said: “The recommendations made were supposed to be discussed by the NEC and the reason for the recording was to allow SNP HQ staff to write up the discussion, to make it easier to see what we had said about every point in the report and then decide what to put forward for approval.”

They said Mr Brown’s recommendations were shelved: “When the next NEC meeting took place two months later, we were told there hadn’t been enough time to review the recording, so the recommendations wouldn’t be going forward.”

Earlier reports over the weekend claimed discussion was "blocked" by Mr Murell and the party’s business convenor, Kirsten Oswald, who was appointed to the post by Ms Sturgeon.

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A source told the Times: “The main blockers to change were people in the non-elected positions like Peter Murrell and Kirsten Oswald, 

“So the elected party president and elected deputy leader lost to the unelected Murrell and Oswald.”

Meanwhile, Joanna Cherry, who quit the NEC in June 2021, said she did because of the “menacing atmosphere” of the party’s ruling council which she claimed was being “secretive and evasive.” 

In her resignation letter, obtained by the Sunday Times, the MP said it had “proved impossible for me to do the job I was elected to do”.

She said she was also “very concerned at the lack of adherence to the party’s constitution, the cavalier attitude towards legal advice and fiduciary duties”.

She added: “Over the years I have sat on a number of management boards and I have never seen business conducted in such an inadequate way as it is on the SNP NEC. Nor have I experienced the menacing atmosphere in which the business is conducted.”

Labour and the Tories said there were now questions for Ms Oswald to answer.