POLICE Scotland has released almost three minutes of footage which show former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell being interviewed by officers prior to him being charged for embezzling more than £400,000 from his party over a 12-year period.
Murrell was arrested in April 2023 and questioned by detectives while his Uddingston home, which he shared with Sturgeon, and the SNP's headquarters were searched. He was then released without charge.
However, one year later, in April 2024, Murrell was re-arrested and charged with embezzlement.
Lord Young sentenced Murrell, the estranged husband of former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, to a backdated sentence of five years and three months at the High Court in Edinburgh.
The four video clips are from the 2024 interview, in which Murrell attended Falkirk Police Office where he was arrested and again interviewed, and he is seen making no comment in response to all questions asked. At the end of the interview he was charged with embezzlement, to which he made no response, and was released from custody.
A complaint about possible mismanagement of SNP finances was first made to Police Scotland in March 2021. Other complaints followed and, in response, the police began to investigate.
It was during Operation Branchform that evidence of the accused’s embezzlement was uncovered and became a focus for further investigation.
In the first clip – record on Thursday, April 18, 2024, at 11.36am – Murrell is asked about a false invoice created for a Jaguar i-Pace where the car was labelled as “stage payment” for SNP events which had to be postponed because of the pandemic.
In September 2019 he traded in the Golf for the Jaguar i-Pace, an electric vehicle worth £81,277. He paid a deposit of just over £12,000 which came from fraudulent expense claims.
A balance of £57,500 was then paid in November 2019 using two direct transfers from the SNP account.
A previously seen indictment stated that the car was sold in Glasgow in August 2021 to We Buy Any Car for £47,378, which was allegedly paid into Murrell’s personal bank account.
The interviewer states: “You created that false invoice so you could account for a purchase of a Jaguar motor vehicle through the party’s books as something else, that’s the case, isn’t it Peter?”
Murrell responds: “No comment."
The interviewer goes on: “Now, I’ll take you back to this section of embezzlement. “The accused, in order to conceal his defalcations, usually makes false entries in the books, or omits to make entries. Here we have false entries for the Xero accounts system. Here we have a forged document.”
Peter Murrell's use of Amazon
The second clip – record at 4.42pm on the same day – shows Murrell being asked about his use of Amazon.
The charges brought against Murrell included spending £81,610.19 of SNP funds on Amazon purchases (2010–2023), allegedly for personal use or others, and recorded in a way said to disguise their true nature.
The interviewer states: “Amazon – the perfect foil for you, because they’re a retailer you can hide transactions behind, because they sell everything. So, you can describe it as anything – and they deliver quickly … but it’s easy to hide, easy to miscode, easy to buy things and call them something else if you buy them on Amazon.
“And you spread the Amazon transactions across three cards, because see if all your Amazon purchases were on your own card, it would just be Amazon, Amazon, Amazon – it’d be non stop. And you’d probably have maxed out your card after a while. But you spread that across all three. “That’s why you used Amazon so much, wasn’t it?”
Murrell responds: “No comment.
Peter Murrell asked about SNP members
In the third clip – recorded at 4.57pm – Murrell is questioned about what he would say to SNP members who asked or will ask about why the party’s reserves are low.
The interviewer states: “It’s all about your game. Your behaviour and embezzlement must have had a negative impact on the business. There must have been decisions to be made because the cash reserves were so low – and part of the reason they’re low is your thieving off them.
Murrell is then bluntly asked by the officer: “What would you say to those people, those members, who ask you about that? What are you going to say to them when they ask you about the money?”
The former chief executive of the party responds: “No comment”.
£19,000 on luxury pens
The fourth clip – recorded at 5.01pm – starts with the interviewer stating: “Of that amount, over £19,000 is exclusively on pens alone.”
After a moment of silence, he continues: “It’s, quite frankly, an outrageous amount of money to be spending on pens, in my opinion. What about your opinion?”
Murrell again states: “No comment.”
The interviewer adds: “You bought them. You’ll have an opinion on them, Peter.”
Murrell repeats: “No comment.”
The interviewer then asks: “What does the SNP need over £19,000 of luxury pens for?”
Murrell repeats for the third time in the exchange: “No comment.”
