Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell will have rationalised his embezzlement of more than £400,000, acting on a possible internal pressure to have the “lavish lifestyle that he craved but could not afford” a criminologist suggested.
Dr Nicola Harding said Murrell’s case was a “textbook white collar crime” involving someone in a “position of respectability”.
But she said that Nicola Sturgeon’s ex-husband may have been “trying to fill a gap within himself” with his series of lavish purchases, which were paid for with party cash.
Speaking the day after more details about how Murrell’s crimes were committed were revealed in court, the expert said: “What I know from the fraudsters, financial criminals I have worked with, is purchasing, what they try to gain out of it is not really about the items themselves, it is about how those items make them feel.”
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Breakfast programme, Dr Harding said: “They are often coming from a place of not feeling good enough and they are trying to use this purchasing to overcome psychological internal failures where they feel that they are not good enough, feel that they don’t fit in.”
She continued: “I don’t think its necessarily about compulsive needs for products, I think it is trying to fill a gap within himself.
“I don’t know the individual to be able to speculate much further, but it often comes from a psychological wound they are trying to heal themselves, just in the wrong way.”
Having met “many many white collar criminals” Dr Harding said that “all of them have one thing in common, which is they are incredibly likeable and charismatic”.
She added: “They are in these positions for good reason initially, and then that becomes exploited over time.
“From the outside world they will look normal, they will look respectable and they will look like we should trust them and that is exactly why we do.”
However she speculated that Murrell will have felt “probably an internal pressure, maybe a bit of pressure he felt from his position in society” saying he may have felt he should have had luxury items such as the expensive watches and pens purchased.
She stated: “There will have been a pressure, that appears to have been a lavish lifestyle that he craved but could not afford.”
Adding that he had the opportunity for his crimes from the “lack of oversight”, Dr Harding suggested: “He’s used this opportunity, and the pressure, probably an internal pressure, maybe a bit of pressure he felt from his position in society, but crucially he will have found a way to rationalise it.
“Maybe he told himself he was not doing anything wrong, maybe he thought all politicians or parties acted in this way, or that he wasn’t doing any harm.
“Those three things have to have happened. He’s had to have the opportunity, there will have been pressures for this lifestyle, not necessarily from other people, probably internally, wanting something he couldn’t afford to bring in any other way.
“But crucially he will have rationalised it to make it OK, and that is why he has done it over such a long period of crime.”
She also said Murrell could have been emboldened by earlier crimes being undetected, with the expert saying: “When a criminal or potential criminal sees an opportunity, the difference between a criminal and a non-criminal is whether they take it.
“And when you see that early opportunity and nobody checks it, there’s no repercussions, it does embolden you, it does give you that false confidence, and helps with that rationalisation, as surely if you were doing something wrong someone would have picked up on it, someone would have said something.”
This allows criminals to “skew this completely different narrative of what is going on”, she stated.
Dr Harding said: “The length of time he has got away with it will definitely have made the purchases get larger, more frequent over time.”
