Nicola Sturgeon has said she feels “deceived, betrayed and lied to” by her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, after he admitted embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the Scottish National Party.
Emotional Turmoil
Speaking at Listowel Writers’ Week in County Kerry, Ireland, in her first public appearance since Murrell’s guilty plea, the former first minister described the period as “probably the worst week of my life”. She told the audience she was “not OK”, but added: “I will be OK, I am a strong, resilient person.” She said she would probably need to sit with a therapist, acknowledging the depth of her distress. Sturgeon, 55, said she was coming to terms with having “spent many years married to somebody that, as it turns out, I obviously didn’t know at all”, calling it “a really painful truth to process”.
Murrell’s Guilty Plea
Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh on 25 May 2026 to embezzling £400,310.65 from the party. The offences spanned more than 12 years, from August 2010 to October 2022. According to court documents, Murrell used his position to falsify invoices, use party credit cards and manipulate accounts to disguise personal expenses as legitimate party spending. The embezzled money funded a luxury motorhome costing £124,550, a Volkswagen Golf and a Jaguar I‑PACE, as well as expensive watches, a £4,225 fountain pen, jewellery, boutique cosmetics, designer homeware, iPads, Kindles, gaming consoles and video games including Grand Theft Auto V and FIFA titles. Other purchases included a telescope costing £1,199, high‑end coffee machines and even a copy of Sturgeon’s own book of speeches. Police Scotland’s Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston described Murrell’s actions as a “gross breach of trust”, saying he diverted cash to “bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford”. Murrell has been remanded in custody and is due to be sentenced on 23 June 2026; legal experts have suggested he faces a lengthy prison term.
Sturgeon’s Exoneration and Cooperation
Sturgeon stressed that she had been “completely exonerated” after a “two‑year‑long, very forensic police investigation”. She was arrested and questioned by police in June 2023 as part of Operation Branchform, the Police Scotland inquiry into SNP finances. Officers also searched the home she shared with Murrell. The former first minister said she “fully cooperated” with Police Scotland. Asked about reports that she answered “no comment” during her police interview, she insisted she did answer questions but followed the advice of her lawyer in “a very stressful situation”. Her solicitor, Aamer Anwar, later said that giving “no comment” answers was standard legal advice and that Sturgeon subsequently submitted a “fully detailed written response” to the questions put to her. She said she “never heard any more from them for two years until they told me I was cleared”. Police Scotland concluded their investigation into Sturgeon and former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie in March 2025, deciding not to bring charges against either individual. Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay has criticised Sturgeon’s initial “no comment” stance.
Claims of Ignorance
Sturgeon has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell’s crimes. Speaking in Ireland, she acknowledged that people would naturally ask: “How can she not have known?” She argued that the question rests on a “big misassumption — which is that I knew anything about it, or that I knew all about it”. She said that many assume she was aware of the purchases Murrell made and simply did not question how he paid for them. “As recently as Monday I was reading about things in the newspapers for the first time, things that I had never seen, I didn’t know about,” she stated. “It wasn’t just that I didn’t question where they came from.” She described herself as “utterly appalled” and said she had been “misled just as others were”. Sturgeon revealed she was only in the “very early stages” of processing the realisation that she had been married to someone she did not truly know. She stressed that she wanted “people to hear from me my side of this”, accepting “there are questions”. Sturgeon announced her separation from Murrell in January 2025.
Wider Scandal
Operation Branchform was launched by Police Scotland in July 2021, initially to investigate allegations that more than £600,000 — later reported as £666,953 — raised for a second independence referendum campaign had been improperly spent. The investigation uncovered Murrell’s embezzlement over a 12‑year period. As of 30 April 2026, the operation had cost Police Scotland over £2.17 million. The original £667,000 that prompted the investigation remains unaccounted for. The scandal has been described as “the highest‑profile scandal of the Scottish devolution era”, and is widely seen as having contributed to Sturgeon’s resignation as SNP leader and first minister. Some have called for a parliamentary inquiry into the actions of the SNP, Police Scotland and the Crown Office.
