THE BBC will be issuing a correction after one of its top presenters claimed that the SNP was embroiled in an “ongoing court case”, The National has been told.
Amol Rajan made the erroneous claim while presenting Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday morning.
The radio show was covering the SNP’s conference, which is ongoing in Aberdeen and on Sunday saw delegates back a proposal to treat winning the majority of seats at the next General Election as a mandate to open negotiations with the UK Government.
Introducing an interview with SNP depute leader Keith Brown, Rajan (above) said: “It has not been an easy few weeks for Humza Yousaf’s party.
“An SNP MP defected to the Conservatives last week, and the week before there was a big swing to Labour in the Rutherglen and Hamilton by-election.
“Meanwhile there is an ongoing court case looking at the party's finances.”
There is no court case into the SNP finances.
A police investigation, codenamed Operation Branchform, is ongoing but has to date not brought any charges.
The three people arrested and questioned as part of the probe into SNP finances – former leader Nicola Sturgeon, former party chief executive Peter Murrell, and former treasurer Colin Beattie – were all later released without charge.
Asked about Rajan’s statement, the BBC said it would be issuing a correction.
When this article was first published, that correction had not yet appeared on the broadcaster’s Corrections and Clarifications page.
Later on Monday, the BBC added a note acknowledging the error.
The broadcaster wrote: "While introducing an item about the SNP conference starting in Aberdeen we said that 'there is an ongoing court case looking at the party's finances'.
"To be clear there is no court case currently happening around this – instead there is an ongoing police investigation into the SNP’s finances and at present nobody has been charged under that inquiry."
Rajan was formerly an advisor to Evgeny Lebedev, the Boris Johnson ally who was handed a role in the House of Lords against direct advice from Mi5 intelligence officers.
Rajan edited Lebedev’s newspaper The Independent from 2013, joining the BBC as its media editor in 2016.
In 2023, he took over from Jeremy Paxman as the host of University Challenge.
