The Law Society of Scotland is facing intense pressure over a year-long delay in alerting prosecutors to a case of suspected mortgage fraud linked to Scottish National party MP Michelle Thomson.

The society, the governing body for the Scottish legal profession, confirmed that its head of financial compliance had seen an official disciplinary report that named Thomson in July 2014, but had taken until July 2015 before passing it to the Crown Office.



Legal sources said the Crown Office first asked the Law Society for details and extra information about the case in December 2014 and again in April 2015, but was not told that Thomson was linked to the alleged fraud until two months after the general election.



Thomson resigned on Tuesday as the SNP’s shadow business secretary at Westminster, and was suspended as an SNP member, after Police Scotland revealed they were investigating 13 dubious property sales that led to her property lawyer Christopher Hales being struck off for possible mortgage fraud in May last year.



As further questions emerged about the role of another Law Society official who knew Thomson and was also a nationalist campaigner, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon made clear that the MP faced being drummed out of the party over the affair as she faced a barrage of questions at Holyrood.



The first minister insisted that her former colleague, who played a key role in Sturgeon’s general election campaign and had co-founded the prominent independence campaign group Business for Scotland, was innocent until proven guilty. Thomson had also denied any wrongdoing.



As she faced repeated questions from opposition leaders about the SNP’s candidate vetting procedures, Sturgeon insisted she had had no idea that her colleague was involved in the affair until she was named by the Sunday Times two weeks ago.

Sturgeon then implied that had she known of the suspicions around Thomson’s property dealings, she would never have been selected to stand for the SNP. A large, full-colour photograph of Thomson was cut down from the window of the SNP’s Edinburgh West office on Wednesday.

“It is ridiculous to suggest that any political party – the SNP or anybody else – would allow a candidate to go forward for selection knowing that there were serious problems about that candidate’s integrity,” Sturgeon said at first minister’s questions.

Kezia Dugdale, the Scottish Labour leader, said she remained incredulous that no one in the SNP knew about the case before now.

“A tribunal issued a damning verdict – that is a fact. A lawyer was struck off – that is a fact. The Crown Office was made aware of concerns – that is a fact. Vulnerable families lost out.

“If the first minister is saying that no one at any level in the SNP knew about the nature of Michelle Thomson’s business dealings, does that mean that nobody asked Michelle Thomson?”

Thomson’s lawyer Aamer Anwar issued a statement stating: “Michelle Thomson maintains that she has always acted within the law. In the interests of her constituents and her party she thought it best if she voluntarily withdrew from the party whip. [She] did so in order to clear her name and return as quickly as possible to frontline politics.”

The row over the official handling of the case deepened further after the Law Society confirmed that its head of investigations, Ian Messer, had received a detailed report from the Scottish Solicitors’ Discipline Tribunal (SSDT) naming Thomson, her husband Peter and Thomson’s business partner Frank Gilbride in July 2014.

Messer first informally told the Crown Office in December 2014 that Hales had been struck off by the SSDT for suspected mortgage fraud, during a routine quarterly meeting between the two organisations. Crown Office lawyers asked Messer to provide them with detailed case files but failed to get them.

At the next meeting on 28 April 2015 – a week before Thomson was elected as MP for Edinburgh West – the Crown Office asked again for the Hales case files. They were not submitted to the Crown Office until 3 July 2015; six days later, the Crown Office alerted fraud officers at Police Scotland, who launched a formal investigation.

Those fresh details emerged when the Law Society’s chief executive, Lorna Jack, took the unusual step of arranging a hurried press conference to defend her organisation’s handling of the affair, and the conduct of Sheila Kirkwood, who is secretary to the society guarantee fund sub-committee which handled the Hales case but had delayed handing the papers over to the Crown Office.

It emerged that Kirkwood was, with her husband and fellow solicitor Paul Kirkwood, a founder of the pro-independence campaign Lawyers for Yes, and as an active nationalist had attended dinners for Thomson’s pro-independence campaign Business for Scotland. Kirkwood had also “liked” Thomson on her Facebook page.



Jack insisted that Kirkwood had had no direct say over the Law Society’s handling of the case against Hales, but she admitted that no independent investigation had yet taken place into whether Kirkwood was aware that Thomson was linked to Hales’s property dealings.

Jack said she had taken Kirkwood at her word that she first became aware of that link when Thomson was named in the media earlier in September.

“I want to stress that Law Society employee Sheila Kirkwood has not acted unprofessionally or inappropriately at any time,” Jack said. “Shelia is a hard-working, dedicated colleague. [I] am confident there was no conflict of interest in relation to Sheila’s role at the Law Society.”



Although it took until July 2015 before the Crown Office and police were handed the case files against Hales, Jack confirmed that the Law Society first became alerted to Hales’s mortgage dealings with Thomson in July 2011 during a routine inspection of his firm’s books.

He was suspended in September 2011 “to protect the public”, she said. “The Law Society’s No 1 regulatory priority is to protect the public from any wrongdoing by solicitors,” she added.

Jack implied too that the Law Society would also have alerted the police to any suspicions because of its legal duties under the Proceeds of Crime Act, but she repeatedly refused to elaborate on whether and when that had been done with the Hales case.

“Under the Proceeds of Crime Act, there is a duty on us as a regulator to report suspicious activity quickly to the appropriate authorities. Such reports and timings or information about the report are confidential by law,” she said.