Alex Salmond died with debts of £350,000, records reveal

Alex Salmond owed almost £350,000 when he died, records show.

The Alba Party leader and former first minister died in North Macedonia in October last year at the age of 69.

A trustee in sequestration has now been managed to handle the next steps for his estate after it emerged that he died with debts the estate cannot afford to pay.

And documents filed on the official register show Salmond owed close to £344,350 at his time of death, and had assets of only £2,280.

The figures were filed by specialist Kenny Craig of insolvency firm Begbies Traynor, who has been named as the trustee in sequestration.

The appointment follows an application to the Accountant in Bankruptcy service by Moira Salmond, who survives her husband.

News that the estate would seek to enter sequestration broke earlier this month. Lawyers attributed the move to costs incurred by Salmond in pursuit of legal action against the Scottish Government.

Salmond won £512,000 from the SNP administration after a legal challenge found that the handling of harassment complaints against him had been “tainted with apparent bias”.

He was acquitted of a catalogue of charges relating to sexual offences in a criminal trial at the High Court in Edinburgh.

Legal firm Levy and Macrae, acting for the estate, said “not a penny” of that payout went to Salmond, and was instead used to cover lawyers’ fees.

Other reporting has shown that Salmond lived in a £7,000-a-month flat in London before his death, sharing the property with Alba chair Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and Chris McEleny, the party’s then-general secretary.