Michelle Thomson, the MP who resigned from the Scottish National party last week, has been referred to the House of Commons standards watchdog over property deals now under police investigation.
The Tory MP Andrew Bridgen has written to Kathryn Hudson, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, to ask her to examine “serious questions” about Thomson’s suitability to be an MP and to investigate the property and mortgage transactions involved.
Thomson, who has a large property rental portfolio but is alleged to have profited from vulnerable home owners, has denied any wrongdoing. She promised to cooperate fully with a police investigation into 13 property deals made on her or her company’s behalf by a solicitor, Christopher Hales, who was struck off for professional misconduct last year.
The Scottish solicitors Discipline Tribunal reported that the “transactions were such that [Hales] must have been aware that there was a possibility that he was facilitating mortgage fraud, whether or not this actually occurred. [It] must have been glaringly obvious to [Hales] that something was amiss when cashbacks of £27,000 or £28,000 from the seller to the purchaser were involved.”
The lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, told the Scottish parliament on Tuesday that the police inquiry would investigate alleged criminality by all those involved in the case.
The Herald reported on Wednesday that Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire, had written to Hudson saying the case raised “serious questions regarding the professional integrity required from a prominent public servant”.
It remains unclear what grounds Hudson, who is also investigating former Scotland secretary Alistair Carmichael for alleged misconduct over the French ambassador’s memo leak, would have to launch an inquiry at this stage.
Thomson, now sitting as the independent MP for Edinburgh West after resigning last week as the SNP’s frontbench business spokeswoman when the police inquiry was confirmed, has yet to be formally named in connection with the investigation.
The property transactions in question date back to 2010 and 2011, before Thomson became an MP; she has not yet been officially accused of any crime, and there is a live police investigation.
James Dornan, the SNP MSP, told BBC Scotland’s current affairs programme Scotland 2015, that her accusers were jumping to conclusions and described the accusations against her as “innuendo”.
He added: “These actions took place before she was an SNP MP. [She] has been accused of nothing; she’s certainly been found guilty of nothing. So at the end of the day we should allow the investigation to take place.”
