Peter Murrell was locked up yesterday after admitting embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP.

The former party chief executive was led away from court in handcuffs after the bombshell admission.

He was initially charged with using more than £459,000 of the SNP’s funds but after amendments and deletions admitted to the sum of £400,310.65.

And as his estranged wife, former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon insisted she had not been aware of her husband’s actions, questions were asked as to how she could have missed the clues.

Critics claimed it was ‘inconceivable’ she had not spotted the tell-tale signs of a stream of deliveries to their marital home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire.

Murrell, 61, embezzled the cash from the SNP between 2010 and 2022 while he was SNP chief executive, starting just a few weeks after he and Ms Sturgeon married.

More than £16,400 of the money was used to help buy a Volkswagen Golf in 2016 and another £57,500 of SNP cash went towards the purchase of a Jaguar I-Pace in 2020.

He also bought four coffee machines worth between £1,299 and £3,231 from 2014 to 2018, Lalique salt and pepper grinders worth £2,600, two Bremont watches worth more than £4,500 each and thousands of pounds of Mont Blanc pens.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Murrell admitted the embezzlement charge before judge Lord young.

He arrived at court just after 8am with his legal team, carrying a bag containing personal items.

The hearing began shortly after 10.15am when prosecutor Alan Cameron KC said he was making amendments to the charge facing Murrell.

At 10.37am, Defence advocate John Scullion KC then rose to his feet and said: ‘He will plead guilty to the indictment as amended.’

The former party boss created false invoices and accounting entries during the process to buy the vehicle to con SNP members into thinking the purchase was a legitimate party expenditure.

The indictment says he kept the motorhome at properties connected to family members.

SNP money was also spent at retailers like John Lewis, Dyson, Montblanc, Selfridges, Wayfair and Molton Brown. He also used false accounting procedures to conceal the true nature of the purchases totalling £139,971.

Murrell also used SNP money to pay a £30 personal parking fine and sold an SNP owned iPad Pro and pocketed £701 from the sale.

Mr Cameron said the Crown intended to recover Murrell’s ill gotten gains by using proceeds of crime legislation.

Lord Young remanded Murrell in custody and ordered a background report to be commissioned.

Telling him he’d be sentenced next month, the judge said: ‘Over a 12 year period you embezzled over £400,000 from the SNP.

‘As chief executive of that organisation over that period your actions were a gross breach of trust.’

The case will call again next week when Mr Cameron will present a narrative to the court detailing Murrell’s offending.

Lord Young will then decide whether the proceeds of crime action can proceed.

Murrell will be sentenced on June 23.

Ms Sturgeon was arrested and questioned by police in 2023 as part of the probe into the SNP’s finances, but never charged and is not facing any further action.

She announced last year she and Murrell had split and had effectively been ‘separated for some time now’.

After her estranged husband was placed on remand pending sentencing next month, Ms Sturgeon issued a statement via Instagram saying she was ‘angry, hurt, sad and very distressed’ at his actions and had suffered a ‘profound personal trauma’, adding: ‘To be deceived and let down by a husband I loved and trusted has caused me acute pain. Why he acted as he did is, and always will be, beyond my comprehension.’

Ms Sturgeon, who has a lucrative new career as an author and speaker on leadership and ‘reputation’, vehemently denied wrongdoing saying she had ‘no knowledge of suspicion whatsoever that he was using SNP funds for personal purposes’. That I was fully cleared after a through investigation underlines that these are not my crimes. I was misled, just as others were.’

But after John Swinney gave a faltering performance at a press conference as he was quizzed about her denial, Ms Sturgeon issued a second statement via lawyer Aamer Anwar, who called her his ‘client’.

Repeating her denial, she said was ‘not aware’ of Murrell ever buying many items, including expensive watches and games consoles, and only learned of the infamous campervan bought in 2020 when ‘it featured in the police investigation in early 2023’.

The purchase of the motorhome was first exposed by the Scottish Mail on Sunday.

Ms Sturgeon said she had ‘no reason to doubt’ Murrell ‘used his own money’ on other purchases.

She said: ‘We were both earning high salaries and, due to the responsibilities of my job, rarely socialised or went on holidays. We had separate bank accounts and I had no access to his financial records.’

Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said: ‘Peter Murrell has finally taken the rap for being a thieving magpie - but he used vast sums of the stolen cash to feather the marital nest he shared with Nicola Sturgeon.

‘His crime spree took place right under her nose over many years while they jointly held a vice-like grip on the SNP.

‘You would need to be a particularly gullible member of Nicola Sturgeon’s fan club to swallow her preposterous protestations of ignorance about her husband’s criminal racket.

‘As a supposed master of fine detail, is it really plausible to believe that she didn’t notice that her crooked husband was spending money like a lottery jackpot winner? Did she never think to ask Peter where the money was coming from?’

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie added: ‘The public will be aghast that Peter Murrell embezzled more than £400,000 from the SNP over a decade.

‘This was a large-scale fraud which Nicola Sturgeon benefited from, with Murrell spending money donated in good faith on luxury items including cosmetics, jewellery, cars, and a motorhome. It is inconceivable that Sturgeon knew nothing about this.’

In 2023, a leaked video of an online meeting of the SNP’s ruling body from March 2021 showed Ms Sturgeon playing down concerns about the party’s finances.

She told the National Executive Committee: ‘The party has never been in a stronger financial position.’

The then party leader then warned colleagues: ‘Just be very careful about suggestions that there are problems with the party’s finances because we depend on donors to donate.

‘There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances and all of us need to be careful about not suggesting that there is.’

Her comments coincided with three senior officials quitting the SNP’s finance and audit committee after Murrell refused to show them the SNP’s books.

Former SNP MP Joanna Cherry KC, who quit the NEC shortly afterwards with Treasurer Douglas Chapman over finance concerns, said people had been ‘monstered’ by Sturgeon loyalists for daring to ask questions at the time.

Criticising NEC chair Kirsten Oswald and NEC member Alex Kerr, now both MSPs, she said she and others who queried the party’s finances were owed an apology and urged Mr Swinney to set up an independent inquiry.

She said she was ‘very angry and upset about what has happened’, adding: ‘I tried to ask questions about it. I was treated appallingly, and I saw other women and men also treated appallingly.’

Ms Cherry continued: ‘He [Murrell] wouldn’t have got away with it if the mechanisms that were in place for scrutiny hadn’t been frustrated by his wife, the party leader, and other people in the National Executive Committee, including Kirsten Oswald, who’s now a government minister, and Alex Kerr, who’s now the secretary of the party. His behaviour would have come to light sooner, and maybe not quite so much money would have been stolen.’

Speaking after the court hearing, Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston, the officer in charge of Operation Branchform, the name given to the investigation into the SNP finances said Murrell had abused his position to ‘bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford’.

He added: ‘This was a lengthy and extremely complex case due to the scale of criminality over a 12-year period and the lengths Peter Murrell went to try and cover his tracks.

‘Peter Murrell has shown utter contempt for the high public trust placed in him as the Chief Executive of a political party and his position in the wider political establishment in Scotland for many years.

‘He abused his privileged position with access to Scottish National Party funds to divert cash into his own accounts and bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford.

‘From 2010 to 2022 he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury goods while carefully trying to hide his criminality with false receipts and accounting.

‘He must now face the consequences of his actions.’

Mr Houston would not respond to demands to explain what those close to Murrell knew about his offending and said: ‘What others may be aware of that’s a matter for them to answer what they may or may have not have known regarding the conduct and the criminal behaviour or Peter Murrell.’