Sturgeon says she is serving sentence for crime she did not commit

Nicola Sturgeon tried to draw a line between her own conduct and the scandal engulfing the Scottish National Party, but Peter Murrell’s guilty plea left the party facing a harder question about trust, money and control. The former first minister said she was “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her estranged husband admitted taking party funds for his own use.

Murrell pleaded guilty in the High Court in Edinburgh on 25 May 2026 to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP, with court reporting putting the figure at £400,310.65. The money was taken between 12 August 2010 and 13 January 2023, according to the indictment, and was reported to have been spent on luxury goods, cars and a motorhome. One court filing said Murrell used party funds to buy a £124,550 motorhome in 2020 for his own personal use.

Sturgeon said she was “angry, hurt, sad and very distressed” by Murrell’s actions and insisted she had no knowledge or suspicion that he was using SNP money personally. She also said she had been “misled just as others were” and described the past week as the “worst week of my life”. In a further comment, she said the revelations showed she did not know her former husband “at all” despite the couple marrying in 2010 before later separating.

The political damage reaches beyond the marriage. Murrell was not only Sturgeon’s husband, he was the SNP’s long-serving chief executive, placing him at the centre of the party’s internal machinery during the years the money was allegedly siphoned away. John Swinney called his conduct an “overwhelming betrayal” and said the SNP itself was a victim of the embezzlement, while also apologising to members and donors affected by the theft.

The case sits inside Operation Branchform, Police Scotland’s inquiry launched in 2021 into what happened to about £600,000 raised by the SNP for independence campaigning. Sturgeon and former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested in June 2023 and later released without charge, and Sturgeon was formally cleared in March 2025. She has also defended giving “no comment” answers during police questioning.

For the independence movement, the test now is whether voters see this as a personal betrayal, an institutional failure, or both. The SNP’s finances have already taken a hit, with annual accounts showing a deficit, a sharp fall in membership and uncertainty over whether Murrell’s outstanding loan to the party will be written off.