First Minister Alex Salmond claims The Observer accessed his bank account
Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond has claimed that his bank account was accessed by The Observer newspaper.
The SNP leader made the allegation while giving evidence yesterday at the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, but last night a spokesman for The Observer told the BBC: "We have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate the allegation".
The issue of Salmond’s bank account came up when inquiry QC Robert Jay asked the politician if his phone had ever been hacked.
The first minister replied that he had not been contacted by Strathclyde Police, who were investigating phone hacking in Scotland, to say he had been a victim.
However, he added: "What I can say is that I believe that my bank account was accessed by The Observer newspaper in 1999.
"My reason for believing that is I was informed by a former Observer journalist who gave me a fairly exact account of what was in my bank account that could only have been known to somebody who had seen it."
Salmond, who was party leader and an MP at Westminster in 1999, explained: "For example I bought some toys for my then young nieces in a toy shop in Linlithgow High Street which was called 'Fun and Games'.
"The person who informed me told me this caused great anticipation and hope in The Observer investigation unit because they believed that perhaps 'Fun and Games' was more than a conventional toy shop."
A spokesman for Guardian News & Media, which owns The Observer, said that Salmond first raised the matter of an alleged unauthorised access of his bank account with the editor of the Sunday newspaper last year.
"As we explained to him [Salmond] last year, on the basis of the information he had given us, we have been unable to find any evidence to substantiate his allegation.
"As our response to him at the time made clear, we take this allegation very seriously and if he is able to provide us with any more information we will investigate further."
The BBC’s media correspondent, Torin Douglas, reports: “Alex Salmond's statement about The Observer caused a flurry in the courtroom.
“Any suggestion that papers beyond the Murdoch group have been involved in wrongdoing has implications for the press as a whole.
“When it's a ‘quality’ paper rather than a tabloid - and the sister paper of The Guardian, which exposed the phone hacking scandal - the concerns go wider.
“We already knew, from a 2006 report by the Information Commissioner, that more than 30 national papers - including The Observer - had paid private investigators to gather information - but often they claimed a ‘public interest’ defence.“
Salmond has declined to name the former Observer journalist.
Prime Minister David Cameron will give evidence to the inquiry today.