Peter Murrell bought motorhome, watches and games with SNP funds
Peter Murrell used SNP money to buy a motorhome, watches and games over 12 years, exposing how party controls failed at the top.
Peter Murrell’s guilty plea laid bare a theft that ran for more than a decade and cut through the Scottish National Party’s financial controls at the highest level. At the High Court in Edinburgh on 25 May 2026, the former SNP chief executive admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the party between 12 August 2010 and 19 October 2022, and was remanded in custody. Police Scotland said the case involved a lengthy and extremely complex 12-year period of criminality, while Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston said Murrell had shown “utter contempt” for the public trust placed in him and had used false receipts and accounting to cover his tracks.
The spending pattern was as revealing as the scale of the theft. Court papers showed SNP money going on a £124,550 Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4E motorhome, £57,500 towards an £81,277 Jaguar I-PACE, and £16,489 towards a £32,989 Volkswagen Golf. Other purchases included two Bremont watches costing £9,350.25, a Starwalker World Time fountain pen for £4,225, a Jura Giga 5 Cromo coffee machine for £3,231.90, a Celestron 11069 NexStar 8SE telescope for £1,199, a PlayStation 3 for £247.42, two Ideal Standard toilet seats for £68.82 and Grand Theft Auto V for £42.99. The 126-page indictment also listed three designer manicure sets, DVDs of the Danish political thriller Borgen, a Monopoly board game, a £1,475 Beatles special edition fountain pen and rollerball, a home library ladder worth more than £900, and designer salt and pepper shakers.
Murrell had originally been accused of embezzling £459,049 before the charge was reduced to £400,310.65. His admission is a severe blow to the SNP’s claim that its internal systems were capable of policing party money across the years in which he ran the organisation. Murrell had been chief executive for more than 20 years before he stood down in 2023 during the leadership race to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as first minister. Sturgeon said she had no knowledge or suspicion that personal items had been bought with SNP funds and said she had been “utterly appalled”, later saying she had been “deceived”, “misled”, “lied to” and “betrayed” by her estranged husband.
The fallout has not stopped with Murrell’s plea. Sturgeon and former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie were later told they would face no action after Operation Branchform, Police Scotland’s long-running inquiry into SNP finances that began in July 2021. Sturgeon and Murrell ended their marriage in January 2025. Calls for a broader inquiry have since sharpened, with Lord Jack McConnell urging a joint Holyrood-Westminster investigation, while First Minister John Swinney has rejected the need for another probe, arguing the police work was already thorough. The case has become more than a scandal over motorhomes and watches: it is a test of how political parties police themselves, how donations are safeguarded, and how quickly public trust can be drained when oversight fails for years without detection.
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