SNP ex-chief Peter Murrell pleads guilty to embezzling £400,000

Peter Murrell’s guilty plea ripped open a longer and more troubling question for Scotland’s governing party: how did the SNP’s former chief executive siphon off more than £400,000 without stronger controls stopping him sooner?

At Edinburgh High Court, Murrell admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the party over a 12-year period from August 2010 to October 2022. The Crown narrative said the money went on personal spending, including luxury goods, home improvements and vehicles, while court reporting said some items were delivered to the couple’s home. Among the purchases was a motorhome costing almost £125,000, along with two cars and tens of thousands of pounds spent through the party charge card on Amazon.

The scale of the theft is politically explosive because Murrell was not a backroom volunteer or one-off fixer. He served as SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023, sitting at the center of the party’s rise through the 2014 independence referendum and its years in government at Holyrood. His guilty plea came after years of scrutiny over SNP finances, including the 2023 arrest of his estranged wife, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, in the same Operation Branchform probe. Sturgeon was not charged.

Murrell was remanded in custody after the plea, and sentencing was set for 23 June 2026. Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform has already become one of the most consequential investigations in the party’s history, not only for what it uncovered about missing money, but for what it suggested about governance at the top of a major national party that was still running the Scottish government while these alleged abuses were unfolding.

First Minister John Swinney called the revelations a “colossal breach of trust” and said he felt horror at the details heard in court. The line now hanging over the SNP is not just what Murrell spent the money on, but who, if anyone, failed to notice, challenge or stop it as the amount climbed year after year.