by Bill Heaney
Nicola Sturgeon said she feels like she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her estranged husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Murrell pleaded guilty this week to embezzling the sum from the SNP between 2010 and 2022.
The 61-year-old spent the money on items including a motorhome, cars, kitchen gadgets, expensive watches and pens, and more mundane purchases such as hand cream and toilet seats.
He is set to be sentenced in June, the same month that the SNP faces two by-election contests – one in Aberdeen South and another in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
The SNP has faced calls for an independent inquiry into its finances.
Sturgeon was Scotland’s first minister from 2014 to 2023, while Murrell served as the SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Sturgeon said she is “not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes”.
She said: “For my own sake, but for the sake of people out there, a lot of women who end up finding themselves blamed for the actions of the men in their lives, I’m not going to contribute to that kind of sense that I am responsible for somebody else’s crimes.
“But I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed, and I’m not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes.”
Sturgeon previously said she had been “completely cleared and exonerated” by police and that she had been lied to by her former husband.
“(Murrell) perpetrated a crime on the SNP,” she told the BBC.
“By definition, that included me as the party leader. He misled. He deceived.
“He is serving and will be serving a sentence for a crime he committed. I’m out here feeling as if I’m serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.”
Nicola Sturgeon said that angry does not even begin to cover how she feels about her ex-husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme, she said: “Am I angry with him? I don’t even think that begins to cover it.
“Because not only has he lied to me and betrayed me – and if this was an entirely private thing, that would be bad enough – I mean, I’ve been genuinely touched this week by some of the messages I’ve had by women who’ve been betrayed by their husbands, lied to by their husbands, not in identical circumstances, although some in, you know, not dissimilar circumstances, and speaking to me about the, just the depth of hurt they feel, and I feel all of that.
“But it’s more than that. He has put me into a position of real peril, he has subjected me to public vilification, having the finger of suspicion pointed at me – you know, humiliation.”
Ms Sturgeon added: “Am I angry at him? Yes, I’m angry, but I’m also carrying a degree of hurt, and I think a degree of trauma about this whole episode resulted in my sitting in a police station under arrest.
Ms Sturgeon also said that the couple were both on high salaries and she thought their incomes would have supported anything she saw in her house.
She told the BBC: “I was working round the clock most days, I wasn’t at home very often, I didn’t take much, if anything, to do with the administration of our household.
“I mean, just to explain how our finances worked, we had separate bank accounts, I never had any access to his bank account, he didn’t have any access to mine, every month I would pass him a sum of money to cover my share of the household expenses and leave him to it.”
A senior minister backed a public inquiry into Peter Murrell’s embezzlement of £400,000 of the SNP, saying the party’s dominance of Scottish politics and society had been “protected by a claim to virtue” denied to others.
Asked whether there should be an inquiry, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, left, told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg: “I think there should. And I think the reason there should be is that two things are going on here.
“You have a marriage, and that was discussed a lot in the interview, but you also have the role of a political leader.
“And the SNP have been the dominant force in Scottish politics for 20 years, and that dominance has extended not just to politics but to society and culture, and it has been protected by a claim to virtue, which is often denied to those elsewhere in the UK, particularly to England.
“And I think that this culture and this claim to virtue has surrounded itself with control and secrecy, and that means that when these scandals hit – and the SNP is not the only party to be hit by a scandal, I should make that clear – the only way through it is full transparency.”
Mr McFadden added that he hoped the Scottish Parliament would “step up to the plate and show that it can do this”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp has backed an inquiry into the SNP after its former chief executive, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
“I think Nicola Sturgeon has more questions to answer as well – she, in the past, for example, publicly claimed she fully co-operated with the police, but then she admitted to you in that interview that she had not commented in the interview, so she lied to the public when she claimed she had supported or co-operated with the police.”
It was put to Mr Philp that Ms Sturgeon’s lawyer advised her not to comment on answers before a written statement, and that “there has been an expensive, long police investigation. Is it really worth it for politicians then to go over everything again? Surely there’s a bit of politics in this that you quite like to make things uncomfortable for the SNP”.
He responded: “Well, to be honest, the criminal investigation is one thing, but conduct in public office is a different thing, and I think – as one of your panellists said earlier – if this were a Conservative or Labour politician, they would get dragged through the bush backwards.
“It’s right this is properly investigated because trust in politics has been undermined, and we need to get to the bottom of it, and we need to find out, you know, what questions did Nicola Sturgeon refuse to answer when the police asked her those questions, and why did she lie by telling the public she had fully co-operated when you’ve established in fact she did not fully co-operate?”