Former SNP MP calls for inquiry into Murrell embezzlement scandal

Joanna Cherry has called for an independent inquiry into how Peter Murrell was able to divert more than £400,000 from Scottish National Party funds over 12 years, turning a criminal case into a wider test of how the party was run at the top. The former SNP MP’s intervention has sharpened scrutiny of whether senior figures missed warning signs, and whether the concentration of power around Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon left too little room for challenge.

Murrell, the party’s former chief executive and Sturgeon’s estranged husband, pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh to embezzling party money between August 2010 and October 2022. The judge called it a “gross breach of trust”. He was remanded in custody ahead of sentencing on June 23, 2026, after admitting he used the money to buy items including a motorhome, cars and luxury goods.

The sums involved are substantial even by party-finance standards. The admitted amount was reported as more than £400,000, with some accounts putting the agreed figure at £400,310.65. Either way, the scale of the theft will deepen questions about how a political organisation with national ambitions allowed such sums to be diverted for years without being stopped.

The case sits inside a broader investigation that has shadowed the SNP since Police Scotland launched Operation Branchform in July 2021. That probe centred on more than £600,000 raised in 2017 for a possible second Scottish independence referendum, money that became a flashpoint for concerns about transparency and internal control. Douglas Chapman resigned as SNP treasurer in May 2021, saying he had not been given enough information to do the job, an early warning sign that party finances were not being adequately overseen.

The inquiry widened further in 2023 when Sturgeon and former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested during the investigation. Sturgeon was later cleared, and police said criminal enquiries into two people arrested as part of the case concluded in March 2025. Even so, the episode has left the SNP facing a longer reckoning over what senior figures knew, when they knew it, and why internal scrutiny appears to have failed for so long.

For the SNP, the embezzlement scandal is now more than a personal downfall. It is a measure of governance inside a party where political authority, financial control and close personal relationships were tightly intertwined, and where the absence of robust oversight may have allowed a major breach to go unchecked.