Nicola Sturgeon admits to ‘incredibly difficult time’ after husband charged in embezzlement probe
Nicola Sturgeon has described her personal situation as “incredibly difficult” after her husband was charged in connection with the embezzlement of SNP funds.
Peter Murrell, who was chief executive of the party until March 2023, was rearrested on Thursday amid a long-running Police Scotland investigation into the SNP’s finances, dubbed Operation Branchform.
The 59-year-old remained in police custody until he was charged just after 6.30pm last night.
He was later released from custody, with a report set to be sent to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service in due course.
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Murrell returns home after being charged
Speaking to reporters outside her home in Glasgow for the first time since the charge, Ms Sturgeon – the former first minister of Scotland and ex-SNP leader – said there was “absolutely nothing I can say given the circumstances”.
But asked by Sky News’ Connor Gillies how difficult it was for her personally, she replied: “It is incredibly difficult, but that’s not the main issue here. So I can’t say anymore, I’m not going to say anymore.”
Humza Yousaf, Ms Sturgeon’s successor as leader of the SNP, said: “These are serious, serious developments. And as per the police statement, we now know that an individual has been charged, Peter has been charged, [with] the allegation of embezzlement from party funds, and that’s a really serious matter indeed.
“Many people in the SNP, right across Scottish politics, will be shocked by the news and this is an ongoing investigation.
“Police, the Crown have a job to do, just as I have a job to do as first minister.”
Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell. Pic: Getty
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Ms Sturgeon, who stood down as first minister last year, has been married to Mr Murrell since 2010.
An SNP spokesperson said: “While this development will come as a shock, the police investigation remains ongoing and it would, therefore, be inappropriate to make any comment.”
Gemini, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by billionaire twins Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, has rolled out prediction markets in the United States after securing key regulatory approval.
Gemini launched its in-house prediction market, Gemini Predictions, across all 50 US states, the exchange announced in an X post on Monday.
Provided via affiliate Gemini Titan, Gemini Predictions enables users to trade on the outcomes of real-world events with “near instant execution” and full transparency.
The launch came shortly after Gemini Titan obtained a designated contract market license from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on Wednesday, authorizing the company to offer prediction markets in the US.
Rising trend for building “everything apps”
The arrival of Gemini Predictions marks the company’s latest step in building a “one-stop super app,” allowing users to not only trade crypto, but also stake assets, earn rewards, buy tokenized stocks and participate in prediction markets.
The move aligns with a broader industry trend toward all-in-one platforms in crypto, with rival exchanges like Coinbase also rushing to introduce a wide range of services, including trending prediction markets and tokenized stocks.
The trend has also been picked up by self-custodial wallets like MetaMask and Trust Wallet, as well as major decentralized exchanges (DEX) like PancakeSwap, which released a new BNB Chain-based prediction platform Probable on Tuesday.
Related: Phantom taps Kalshi to offer regulated prediction markets in wallet
The project adds to a growing portfolio of prediction markets backed by YZi Labs, the venture capital firm founded by Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, including Opinion, which topped volume rankings in November.
Major providers had faced issues in the US
The industry’s push to launch prediction markets follows years of regulatory uncertainty in the United States, with major providers such as Polymarket resuming local operations after previously facing a ban in 2022.
The platform started rolling out its relaunch in the US in early December, announcing that waitlisted users would be the first to access its US app.
In another sign of a warming US stance toward prediction markets, a group of providers, including Kalshi, Robinhood and Crypto.com, recently received a temporary reprieve after a judge intervened following cease and desist orders issued by the state of Connecticut in early December.
Crypto industry executives have urged the US Securities and Exchange Commission to shift its thinking on blockchain privacy tools, pitching that there are legitimate applications for them outside of criminal use.
The SEC hosted crypto and finance executives for a discussion and panel on financial surveillance and privacy on Monday, the agency’s sixth crypto-focused roundtable this year, as it seeks to overhaul its approach to crypto.
StarkWare general counsel Katherine Kirkpatrick Bos, who participated in a panel discussion, told Cointelegraph after the event that a major takeaway was that there shouldn’t be an assumption that those using and creating privacy tools are “overwhelmed by wrongdoers.”
“Why is the assumption that an individual needs to affirmatively prove that they are compliant or they’re using the tool for good?”
“As opposed to it being the other way around, where the assumption is that this individual is using the tool for good until there is some sort of indication that they’re using it for bad,” she said.
Kirkpatrick Bos added that “of course, wrongdoers were using, or are using those tools, but there needs to be a balance.”
During the roundtable, Wayne Chang, the founder and CEO of the credential management company SpruceID, said some percentage of users of stablecoins, a crypto tool that is slowly becoming mainstream, will want privacy.
“There are a ton of stablecoins that aren’t onchain yet that would come onchain if there is privacy,” he said. “We’re going to see an increase in demand for privacy-preserving blockchains.”
“My hope is that regulators continue to engage industry, and we can have those discussions on how to keep privacy for folks while also having tools that are useful,” Chang said.
Customer checks are becoming outdated
Kirkpatrick Bos said a discussion on Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures focused on whether current rules are sufficient in the age of artificial intelligence.
“The question arose and was debated on the panel, well, what is necessary for Anti-Money Laundering?” she said. “Now we have AI. It’s made manual, AML and KYC antiquated. How do we solve for that?”
“There was a sense that the current system of AML and KYC is antiquated, it’s problematic, it’s ineffective,” she added. “But there needs to be some sort of check when it’s a centralized entity facilitating flows of money to ensure that they’re not helping wrongdoers.”
Many financial institutions request a picture of a user’s driver’s license for its KYC checks, which Kirkpatrick Bos said was “absurd, because an individual can go on the internet and develop a fake driver’s license in a matter of seconds.”
“So the question is, can cryptography-based tools improve that and make it harder for bad guys to do that? But can they also do that and make it harder for bad guys while preserving an individual’s privacy and not revealing data like an address, where it is not necessary to vet the legality of the funds?” she added.
Some projects have begun to test crypto-based solutions for proving identity while claiming to preserve privacy, such as Sam Altman’s World, which gives users a cryptographic key they can use to prove they’re human.
SEC’s Atkins warns of potential for crypto mass surveillance
SEC chair Paul Atkins had given opening remarks at the roundtable, warning that if “pushed in the wrong direction, crypto could become the most powerful financial surveillance architecture ever invented.”
“If the instinct of the government is to treat every wallet like a broker, every piece of software as an exchange, every transaction as a reportable event, and every protocol as a convenient surveillance node, then the government will transform this ecosystem into a financial panopticon,” he added.
Related: SEC ’eased up on’ 60% of crypto enforcement cases under Trump: Report
Atkins said that crypto allows for “privacy-preserving tools that the analog world could not provide,” which some institutions depend on to build positions or test strategies without “instantly telegraphing that activity to competitors.”
He added that some of the technology could balance the government’s interest in deterring security threats and the public’s privacy.
“But to best strike this balance, we must make certain that Americans can use these tools without immediately falling under suspicion.”
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