7 days ago

Nicola Sturgeon has told the BBC she feels like she is "serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit" after her estranged husband admitted embezzling £400,000 from the SNP, the party she led for years.

In an exclusive interview with Laura Kuenssberg, Scotland's former first minister refused to apologise for the scandal and struggled to hold back tears, recalling gifts from Peter Murrell that turned out to have been purchased with stolen money.

Sturgeon told the BBC: "I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed and I'm not going to apologise for somebody else's crimes."

She has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell's wrongdoing, committed between 2010 and 2022.

The former first minister was not charged following a police investigation.

Sturgeon was SNP party leader between 2014 and 2023 and in that role shared responsibility for monitoring the party's accounts.

In the interview, broadcast on Sunday, Sturgeon 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."

She added: "I will take responsibility for the things I do, the decisions I make. I'm sitting here with you right now, answering questions because I believe strongly in that accountability.

"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's interview was met with scepticism from some and a demand for further investigation into the scandal.

UK government minister Pat McFadden warned there should not be a "culture of control and secrecy that just tries to shut this down".

Asked if she bore no responsibility at all despite her role, Sturgeon told the BBC: "No... [Murrell] perpetrated a crime on the SNP. 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."

That echoed comments from the former first minister earlier in the week, when she told an audience at a literary festival she was "deceived, betrayed and lied to" by her husband.

The largest single transaction made by Murrell was £124,550 for a motorhome which was parked at his mother's house.

Sturgeon said she had no "conscious memory" of ever seeing the luxury vehicle, which she said was "round the sides of the house which is not immediately visible in the way that we went into the home".

She said "it was between their house and the next door neighbour's" and if she had seen it she would "probably have assumed it was a neighbour's", adding: "Why would it have crossed my mind that it was the SNP's?"

Murrell also spent the money on two cars, jewellery, handbags, expensive coffee machines and games consoles, among other things.

Sturgeon became visibly emotional when speaking to the BBC about a necklace gifted to her by Murrell that cost more than £400 and which she often wore in public.

She said: "I'd been campaigning a lot in Shetland and we went to visit, as part of the campaign, we went to visit this amazing business, the Shetland jewellers, and I was being shown around the shop and I stopped at this pendant.

"I mean, you've seen pictures of it, it's beautiful.

"Later that night, Peter said to me 'I've got a surprise for you' and 'I saw you admiring this pendant' and gave me it."

She struggled to hold back her emotion, before continuing: "Sorry. I loved that necklace and I wore it a lot.

"And this is the other thing. The idea that I would have gone about wearing things that I had known were anything other than what they were presented as, a gift from my husband... to then find out that these were gifts given to me that he'd bought with the party's money causes a level of, I don't know, pain, bewilderment.

"I don't know, I just... I'm not sure. I'm going to try. I am just not sure I will ever properly come to terms with that."

Murrell spent more than 20 years as chief executive of the party before resigning in March 2023 due to controversy over details of membership numbers.

He was arrested less than three weeks later in connection with the Operation Branchform investigation into SNP funds.

As party leader Sturgeon shared responsibility for monitoring the SNP's accounts. When asked if she had done enough when others in the party were raising concerns about the SNP's finances, she said: "I reject completely the notion that people were trying to alert the party to the kind of behaviour that Peter pled guilty to on Monday".

She also said she wanted to be careful not to do anything that would "step on the toes" of the police investigation into SNP finances.

She said if there had been anything in the accounts which could have alerted her the police "might have reached a different position" on her.

Sturgeon told Kuenssberg while there will now likely be a legal process to recover money from Murrell on behalf of the donors to the party, she should not be expected to contribute.

"I am not guilty of that embezzlement" she said, "so nothing that belongs to me should be part of it." Sturgeon added that includes her marital home, which "wasn't bought by the SNP".

She explained that there would however be a toll on her life and said "the idea that emotionally, practically I can just skip away from this is not true".

Sturgeon was arrested two months later in connection with the inquiry and was questioned by detectives before being released without charge.

"Peter will pay a price rightly for what he's done, but he's paying a price for something he did do. The price I pay is for something I didn't do," Sturgeon said.

"I'm not saying that for sympathy, I'm just saying it because it possibly is the worst feeling in the world to be blamed for the actions of somebody else… particularly when that person is somebody you loved and trusted."

Cherry told BBC Scotland's The Sunday Show: "She's trying to put in our minds that she's being held guilty for her husband's embezzlement, but what we are actually concerned about is her frustration of legitimate scrutiny of the finances of the party."

The minister said that the Scottish Parliament could "step up to the plate and show that it can do this".

McFadden added it was a matter for MPs on the Scottish Affairs Committee as to whether they also wanted to establish an inquiry in Westminster.

"What you cannot have is a culture of control and secrecy that just tries to shut this down when the SNP is such a dominant force in Scotland."

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp added that there should "definitely be an inquiry because trust in politics has been fundamentally undermined" by the scandal.

First Minister John Swinney, who has rejected calls for a Holyrood inquiry, said "we know exactly what happened" in the Murrell case.

He told the BBC: "You can't actually get a standard of investigation any higher in Scotland than a forensic police investigation that results in a successful High Court prosecution and a guilty plea."