Peter Murrell jailed for embezzling more than £400,000 from SNP

Peter Murrell was jailed on Tuesday for siphoning more than £400,000 from Scottish National Party funds, a case that has shaken confidence in the party and raised hard questions about oversight at the top of Scottish politics. The 61-year-old husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon received five years and three months in prison at the High Court in Edinburgh after his conviction for embezzlement.

Police Scotland said Murrell was convicted on May 25, 2026, and that the theft ran for roughly 12 years, from 2010 to 2022. Court reporting said the spending covered a bizarre range of purchases, including cars, a motorhome, luxury goods, luxury homewares, designer stationery, a £1,200 space telescope, pens, watches, bags, shoes, jewellery and toiletries.

The indictment set out some of the clearest examples. In 2020, Murrell used £124,550 of party money to buy a motorhome for his own personal use. He also put £57,500 of SNP funds toward an £81,000 Jaguar I-PACE in 2019 and £16,489 toward a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf bought in early 2016. He was originally accused of embezzling £459,049, a figure later reduced to £400,310.65. Reporting also said he falsified accounting records and created fake invoices to conceal the spending.

The case has become a defining episode in Operation Branchform, Police Scotland’s long-running investigation into SNP finances, which began in 2021 over allegations that about £666,953 raised for a future independence referendum had been improperly spent. Murrell was arrested in April 2023 and charged in April 2024 before pleading guilty in May 2026. Nicola Sturgeon and former party treasurer Colin Beattie were also arrested in 2023; police said in March 2025 that both were no longer under investigation.

Lord Young described Murrell’s conduct as a calculated crime of dishonesty, language that captured the institutional damage as much as the criminal one. The motorhome bought with party funds was later reported seized from Murrell’s mother’s house, a stark symbol of how far the money reached and how badly the SNP’s internal controls failed.