The Scottish government is set to investigate the country’s former first minister, Humza Yousaf, over a £250,000 donation made by Edinburgh to the UN Palestinian refugee agency, UNRWA, when his relatives were trapped in Gaza, The Telegraph has reported.
Yousaf is facing accusations of a conflict of interest and a breach of the ministerial code by interfering in the distribution of foreign aid, the paper said in an article on Saturday.
The former first minister is married to fellow Scottish National Party (SNP) member Nadia El-Nakla, who was born to a Palestinian father and a Scottish mother. El-Nakla’s parents, who had traveled to Gaza to visit relatives, got stuck in the enclave amid the escalation that followed an incursion into Israel by Hamas on October 7 last year, the article said.
According to The Telegraph, a donation of £250,000 (around $325,000) from the Scottish government to UNRWA was officially announced on November 2, 2023. The next day, Yousaf’s father-in-law and mother-in-law were given safe passage out of the besieged Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt.
Yousaf, who resigned as first minister in April as he faced a vote of no confidence in the Scottish parliament after the collapse of a coalition between SNP and the Greens, previously denied there was any connection between the money transfer and the escape of his in-laws.
In March, UNRWA also insisted that it “had no role in the situation regarding the first minister’s extended family, and any suggestion of a conflict of interest in this matter would be completely untrue.”
The Telegraph said it has now learned that the authorities in Edinburgh are conducting a “review of the processes involved in our response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza” under Yousaf’s leadership.
It was earlier reported that Yousaf had ordered the donation of £250,000 in taxpayers’ money to UNRWA despite other officials advising him to send it to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.
The donation to Gaza was made from Scotland’s £10 million International Development Fund, which was intended for projects in four “partner” countries – Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan.
The UK, of which Scotland is a part, has currently suspended all funding for UNRWA due to claims by Israel that some of its workers were involved in the October 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people lost their lives and 250 others were taken hostage.
At least 38,584 people have been killed and some 88,881 others wounded in Israel’s airstrikes and ground offensive in Gaza over the past nine months, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry. A study published in The Lancet medical journal last week suggested that the actual death toll could be five times higher, exceeding 186,000.