Alex Salmond has claimed that the Observer hacked his bank account in 1999, telling the Leveson Inquiry:

“I believe that my bank account was accessed by the Observer newspaper some time ago, in 1999 and my reason for believing that is I was informed by a former Observer journalist, who gave me a [inaudible] of what was in my bank account that could only be known to somebody who had seen it. For example, I had bought some toys for my then at that time young nieces in a toy shop in [inaudible] high street which was called Fun and Games, and the person who informed me told me that 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. And enormous disappointment when it turned out to be just a toy shop. I have to say that on [that specific] high street, it seemed to me unlikely that it would be anything else, but anyway, the point I’m making is the person concerned had detail which could only have been known by somebody who had full access to my bank account at that stage.”

GMG have put out a short statement that does not deny the incident but asks, again, for more evidence.

“Mr Salmond first raised the matter of an alleged unauthorised access of his bank account with the Observer’s editor last year. The allegation was that a journalist working for the Observer had accessed his bank details in 1999. As we explained to him 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.”

Awkward…

UPDATE: Co-conspirators in the comments said the BBC would ignore it, they’re right. So far, so ignored, points out the Sun’s political editor, Tom Neutron-Bomb:

@GuidoFawkes @tnewtondunn You may have noticed Salmond *was* covered on @itvnews in good measure(if u found our pre-footy bulletin at 19:15)

— Chris Ship (@chrisshipitv) June 13, 2012