Peter Murrell’s embezzlement of SNP funds is a giant fraud on Scots as well as on the party and its supporters.

Mind-boggling in its scale and brazen audacity, it was an egregious breach of trust of enormous proportions.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of this moment for Nationalism and wider Scottish politics – only days after the SNP won its fifth successive Holyrood election victory.

John Swinney will have been relieved that Monday’s hearing at the High Court in Edinburgh happened after the poll on May 7.

It had been scheduled to take place prior to the vote – and doubtless would have had a major impact on the lacklustre campaign.

Scottish Labour is now calling for a review to find out why the public were ‘denied the truth until the timing was more convenient for the SNP’ – a good idea, but don’t hold your breath.

We now know that the bureaucracy of a party which tried to convince us that it could manage an independent state was run by a fraudster who raided its funds for more than a decade.

As a backdrop to the First Minister’s desperate relaunch of the SNP’s push for a second referendum later this week, the optics are, well, suboptimal.

This wasn’t petty pilfering – Murrell’s ill-gotten gains amounted to more than £400,000, covering an astonishing array of goods from jewellery and cosmetics to a £124,550 motorhome.

The police seizure of that notorious vehicle, which had been parked at the home of Murrell’s mother in Fife, was revealed by the Scottish Mail on Sunday in 2023 – and remains the best-known exhibit, assuming an almost iconic status.

Fittingly, the German manufacturer, Niesmann+Bischoff, advertises the Smove 7.4e as ‘breaking all the rules’.

Detectives established that Murrell had bought it with party cash and covered his tracks with false entries in the SNP’s accounts.

He did the same when he purchased a Jaguar I-Pace – and kept the proceeds when he later sold the car.

Elsewhere in the haul, there were £200 Fortnum & Mason advent calendars and £2,600 Lalique salt and pepper grinders, and £160 for a Folio Society edition of The Origins of Totalitarianism – whatever gave him the idea to buy that?

One of the most striking facets of the entire grubby affair is the disconnect between the myths peddled by the SNP in government and the squalid reality of how the party was run.

As your taxes were being hiked, the leader’s husband was helping himself to all manner of goodies, many of them beyond the reach of those who voted SNP, some of whom were lured in by its promises of an independent Scotland as a socialist nirvana.

The toxicity of having a married couple jointly running the SNP was a running sore for many years, with Alex Salmond among its many critics.

These concerns were batted away by Nicola Sturgeon, Murrell’s estranged wife, and others, who told us there was nothing to see here – and we should all stop worrying and move on.

Ms Sturgeon used to tweet images of supposed domestic bliss which painted Murrell as something of a put-upon homebody.

In fact, for much of their married life, he was the architect of a jaw-dropping fraud which bankrolled a comfortable lifestyle.

A detailed study by the Mail of their household wealth back in 2015 showed Ms Sturgeon and her husband enjoyed a combined yearly income of more than £200,000 – putting them firmly in the top two per cent of earners in Great Britain. But that still wasn’t enough for Murrell, who kept on stealing to accumulate even more material wealth.

In the end, this preening power couple were laid low by Murrell’s avarice and his burning desire for a lifestyle he couldn’t afford – with Ms Sturgeon quitting as First Minister a few months before her arrest.

Don’t forget that she had issued reassurances that the party’s finances were sound while she was leader – in a video clip still in heavy circulation on social media.

The leaked footage shows Ms Sturgeon angrily insisting the SNP’s coffers had ‘never been stronger’ during a March 2021 meeting of the party’s ruling body.

She is also seen warning members against airing concerns publicly, stating it would undermine the party and deter donors.

While she preferred to focus on her ‘profound personal trauma’ in a statement responding to Murrell’s conviction – it’s all about her, naturally – political opponents pointed out the many unresolved questions surrounding the case.

Dame Jackie Baillie, deputy leader of Scottish Labour, believes it’s ‘inconceivable that Nicola Sturgeon knew nothing about the large-scale fraud, which she benefitted from, taking place under her nose in both her party and her home’.

And Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said Murrell had ‘finally taken the rap for being a thieving magpie’, and had ‘used vast sums of the stolen cash to feather the marital nest he shared with Nicola Sturgeon’.

It’s important to point out that Ms Sturgeon was arrested but never charged in relation to the fraud uncovered by Police Scotland’s long-running Operation Branchform, which has cost taxpayers more than £2million.

Yet many will feel we’re being fobbed off when the SNP or its acolytes tell us to draw a line under the whole sordid mess, and accept that justice has run its course – Murrell is the villain of the piece, by his own admission, and that’s all there is to it.

Mr Swinney can’t hide from the repercussions and spoke of his anger over an ‘overwhelming betrayal’ of ‘dedicated activists’, saying he was ‘horrified’ – but ‘resolute about the future’.

Until now, he has been able to say he can’t comment because of the legal process, though he was tipped off by Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC about the case before the indictment against Murrell came to light publicly.

She announced earlier this month that she would step down as Scotland’s top law officer, though her officials insisted this had nothing to do with her back-channel communications with the First Minister.

Omerta will no longer wash, though Mr Swinney’s hapless predecessor, Humza Yousaf, struggled to hold the ‘no comment’ line during the investigation.

In April 2023, he said he didn’t think the SNP was operating criminally, saying: ‘No, certainly I don’t believe it is at all, no’ – a less than resounding endorsement of his party’s propriety.

Only a month before, Murrell had quit as SNP chief executive ‘with immediate effect’ ahead of a vote of no-confidence for misleading the media about party membership numbers – which now seems a comparatively minor transgression.

The SNP was run by a criminal who held his colleagues, supporters, and donors in contempt, thinking he was too clever to be caught.

Anyone who bought into the Sturgeon/Murrell axis which dominated Scottish politics for so long, believing that the SNP was in safe hands, was cruelly duped.

But the reality is that all of us were taken for fools by a fraudster whose greed knew no bounds – while the party he managed told us repeatedly that it was worthy of our trust.