FORMER SNP chief executive Peter Murrell has pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Murrell arrived at Edinburgh High Court on Monday, May 25, for a hearing after being accused of embezzling the funds from the party between August 2010 and January 2022.
The 61-year-old was first arrested in April 2023 as part of the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, Operation Branchform, and was charged in April 2024.
Murrell pleaded guilty to an amended indictment, after initially being charged with embezzling £459,000 from the SNP. The amount was reduced to £400,310.65.
Following the guilty plea, assistant chief constable Stuart Houston, who had oversight of Operation Branchform, has said the investigation was "lengthy and extremely complex" due to "the scale of criminality over a 12-year period".
Murrell, the estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, was led away in handcuffs and will be remanded in custody until sentencing on Tuesday, June 23.
He admitted using SNP funds to buy items including a motorhome and luxury goods, and towards the purchase of two cars.
The indictment, seen by The National, states that Murrell purchased a Volkswagen Golf costing £32,989 from Eastern Western Motor Group “using funds belonging to the Scottish National party to the value of £16,489”.
Between September 9 and November 20 2019, the indictment states that Murrell purchased Jaguar I-pace for £81,277 from Pentland Motor Company using SNP funds to the value of £57,500 and created a false invoice to provide to the party’s auditors.
The indictment adds that Murrell used “false or inaccurate internal accounting codes and descriptions for the expenditure of the sum of £57,500 into an accounting system used by the Scottish National Party in an attempt to disguise the true nature of said purchase”.
He then sold the Jaguar to We Buy Any Car on August 27, 2021 and received £47,378.76 into his personal bank account.
The indictment also states that Murrell purchased a Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e motorhome “for your own personal use”. He used £124,550 of SNP funds, using SNP credit card in his name, for the purchase.
He initially paid £12,500 to the firm with an SNP credit card in October 2020, before transferring £112,050 from an SNP bank account to cover the rest of the funds.
The indictment adds that Murrell created “false duplicate sales documentation purporting to be from the abovementioned retailer of said motorhome in order to portray the purchase as a legitimate party expense by altering or removing true details of the motorhome sale, and thereafter provide said false duplicate sales documentation” to SNP employees for accounting purposes.
It adds that he then stored the motorhome at his mother Margaret Murrell’s home.
The indictment also says there were £81,610.19 worth of Amazon purchases made “for your own personal use” using SNP credit cards in his own name and the names of Susan Ruddick and Trudi Logan without their knowledge. This amount was reduced to £42,660.74 under the terms of the plea agreement.
The items were delivered to the home he shared with Sturgeon in Uddingston, to the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh, and to addresses in Dunfermline and Irvine. The indictment adds that Murrell created false accounting codes in an “attempt to disguise the true nature of said purchases”.
There were also £159,757.39 worth of purchases made on SNP credit cards by Murrell from a variety of retails including Estee Lauder Cosmetics, MAC, Jo Malone, Dyson and Isle of Harris distillers, among others. This was reduced to £139.971.00 under the plea agreement.
The indictment says Murrell also used an SNP credit card to pay a £30 fixed penalty charge in October 2019 that was issued to him at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy.
In June 2021, Murrell also sold an iPad Pro belonging to the SNP to Technology Recycle Group and pocketed £701 in his personal bank account.
Until he stood down in 2023 during the leadership race to succeed Sturgeon, Murrell had been chief executive of the SNP for more than 20 years.
They had previously been one of the most powerful couples in UK politics for many years, with Sturgeon serving for more than eight years as Scottish first minister and SNP leader, while Murrell was the chief executive of the party.
In January last year, Sturgeon announced she and Murrell had “decided to end” their marriage.
In response to Murrell's guilty plea, Sturgeon said she was "angry, hurt, sad and very distressed" in a social media post.
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