A group of senior Scottish National Party (SNP) figures has demanded a formal investigation into the party's former auditors, Johnston Carmichael, for failing to detect Peter Murrell's £400,000 embezzlement of party funds. Murrell, the SNP's former chief executive, was jailed for more than five years at Edinburgh High Court over the fraud. The complaint raises questions about whether the accountancy firm met its professional obligations while it was responsible for signing off the party's accounts.

The complaint was coordinated by Jim Orr, an internal audit specialist and former Edinburgh councillor, and co-signed by a number of former SNP councillors and local branch officials. In a letter to the chartered accountancy body ICAS, the complainants allege a "potential breach of professional standards" by Johnston Carmichael, which audited the party's accounts until it resigned in 2022. They argue the firm may not have responded appropriately to multiple counts of suspicious behaviour, failed to escalate concerns to senior figures, and instead signed off the accounts as "true and fair" year after year, giving members a misleading impression that all was well.