Peter Murrell convicted over £400,000 SNP embezzlement scandal

The SNP’s former chief executive was brought down by a 12-year paper trail that turned private spending into a criminal case. Peter Murrell admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the Scottish National Party, a sum investigators said was hidden through years of careful concealment and exposed only after detectives and forensic accountants untangled the party’s finances.

Murrell was convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh and remanded in custody after the guilty plea. Sentencing was set for 23 June 2026. Judge Lord Young said Murrell was responsible for a “gross breach of trust”, a verdict that lands especially hard because Murrell ran the SNP for more than two decades and was once one of the most powerful figures in Scottish nationalism.

Police Scotland said the offending ran from 12 August 2010 to 19 October 2022. The force described the case as “a lengthy and extremely complex case” because of “the scale of criminality over a 12-year period and the lengths Peter Murrell went to try and cover his tracks.” Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston oversaw Operation Branchform, the probe into the SNP’s funding and finances that first led to Murrell’s arrest in April 2023. He was charged with embezzlement in 2024, initially on a figure of £459,046.49, before he admitted a reduced sum in an amended indictment.

Court documents showed the money was spent on personal items, including luxury goods, jewellery, cosmetics, two cars and a motorhome. One item singled out in the case was a £124,550 motorhome bought in 2020, a conspicuous purchase that helped investigators trace the money’s destination. Police Scotland said Murrell had shown “utter contempt for the high public trust placed in him” and had abused his privileged position to bankroll a lifestyle he “craved but could not afford.”

The case has cut through the SNP’s public image as much as its internal finances. Murrell resigned as chief executive in March 2023 amid a row over party membership numbers, but the police inquiry widened scrutiny of the party’s controls and oversight. The scandal also revived attention on financial strain inside the SNP, including a reported loan of more than £100,000 from Murrell to help the party with a cash-flow problem after an election. For a party that has long presented itself as disciplined and electorally formidable, the conviction of the man who helped run it exposes how weak controls at the top can turn fundraising and internal finances into a source of lasting damage.