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A major Scottish independence movement has split in a bitter dispute over cash donations.

The All Under One Banner (AUOB) group is behind huge saltire-waving rallies that attract tens of thousands of supporters across the country.

But the Sunday Mail can reveal organisers of the grassroots campaign are at war over money raised in collection buckets.

Bill McKinnon, a director of AUOB Ltd, claims he paid for security, toilets and staging at events in Dundee, Bannockburn and Inverness, as well as bills for a huge march to take place in Edinburgh on October 6.

(Image: Collect Unknown)

But he has been left furious by a breakaway group led by Manny Singh, who has formed a new company called AUOB Scotland Ltd and retained collection money, it is claimed.

Singh meanwhile claims that the new entity was created after McKinnon refused to step down for “spreading lies”, and running a rogue “double bucket” operation.

In May, 60,000 people attended an AUOB rally in Glasgow and SNP MP Stewart Hosie went to the Dundee event where 16,000 took to the streets.

McKinnon said: “I’ve put a lot of my own money into this so what’s happening is sickening.

(Image: Robert Perry)

“They’re trying to portray me as the bad guy.

“I feel completely undermined by this. You’ve no idea how this is affecting my life.

“I’ve been in charge of all the accounts because I’ve a squeaky clean financial record.

“Every aspect of what I’ve done has been audited, but I’ve no access to the bucket collection funds from the last three marches.

“I’ve handled money from online crowd funding and I’ve paid all the expenses for marches – including a big event coming up in Edinburgh where we expect up to 100,000 people.

“AUOB Scotland has taken control of collection buckets – the funds haven’t been deposited in our account so I can’t say where those funds are.

(Image: Collect Unknown)

“This dispute has been ongoing since June, so it covers marches in Dundee, Bannockburn and Inverness.

“An enormous amount of cash could be potentially raised in Edinburgh and I don’t know where that’s going. The new group want us to hand over all the money in the AUOB account, but we refused to do that and said we would talk about it after Edinburgh and at the end of the financial year.

“That was when they started their own company and took over the buckets.”

McKinnon, from Glasgow, who claims to have previously been a manager at a global pharmaceutical company as well as a painter and decorator, added: “There have been personal attacks on me on Facebook and other social media and I’m just so sick of it.

“I got involved in this because I believed in the movement and Scottish independence.”

Footage has appeared online, apparently from a bucket collector, as evidence that cash was handled properly.

(Image: Collect Unknown)

The clip shows plastic containers being cracked open in a field and wads of notes and coins being removed by collectors.

When we contacted Singh, he admitted setting up a new organisation and that he retained cash.

But he claimed he made the move after McKinnon refused to leave amid claims of “gross misconduct”.

Singh said: “I set up the new company because McKinnon wouldn’t return the website to us after we removed him for gross misconduct.

“He’d been spreading lies about members of the movement, including myself, and so we asked him to leave AUOB.

“When he refused to leave, we set up a new company and the money from collection boxes is now in a bank account which I control.

(Image: Collect Unknown)

“We have tamper-proof seals on our buckets and independent organisations observe the opening of buckets.

“AUOB Scotland is a not-for-profit organisation and nobody is profiting from it but people want to spread lies and misinformation.

“People think there’s a lot of money being raised but it isn’t true.

“To raise a lot of money you would need a lot of volunteers collecting.

“We’ve only had around a dozen buckets.”

One independence campaigner said: “There are decent people turning up at these events and handing over large sums of money because they think it’s furthering the independence cause.

"There needs to be proper control over how much is being collected and where it is ending up, and it doesn’t seem that is happening at the moment.

(Image: PETER JOLLY NORTHPIX)

“Obviously there has been a real fall-out between these two groups, but the important thing here is that money being handed over is going to the independence movement.”

A message on the AUOB website states it is a “Pro-Independence organisation whose core aim is to march at regular intervals until Scotland is free”.

A Facebook account states: “Together we have sent a strong message to the British and Scottish political establishments, politicians, news agencies and the general public.

“The unprecedented numbers taking to the streets of Scotland’s cities has encouraged independence supporters everywhere, and worried those who still believe in the broken Westminster system.”

AUOB have previously said their October march in Edinburgh will be the biggest ever.

Previous speakers have included controversial former MSP Tommy Sheridan.