Nicola Sturgeon refused to apologize for the financial crimes committed by her estranged husband, telling the BBC that she feels as though she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.” In an exclusive interview with Laura Kuenssberg broadcast on Sunday, the former Scottish first minister addressed the fallout after Peter Murrell pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,000 from the Scottish National Party, the organization she led from 2014 to 2023.
“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 said. She drew a parallel between her situation and women who are blamed for the actions of male partners, stating she will not contribute to that sense of misplaced responsibility. “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.”
Murrell served as the SNP’s chief executive for more than 20 years before resigning in March 2023 amid disputes over party membership numbers. He was arrested less than three weeks later during Operation Branchform, a police investigation into the party’s finances. Following his guilty plea at the High Court in Edinburgh earlier this week, Murrell was remanded in custody and will be sentenced on June 23.
Sturgeon said she was “deceived, betrayed and lied to” by Murrell, whose embezzlement of party funds occurred between 2010 and 2022. The largest single transaction identified by investigators was a £124,550 purchase of a luxury motorhome, which was parked at Murrell’s mother’s house. Sturgeon said she has no conscious memory of seeing the vehicle and would have assumed it belonged to a neighbor if she noticed it. “Why would it have crossed my mind that it was the SNP’s?” she asked.
Murrell also used the stolen money to purchase two cars, handbags, expensive coffee machines, games consoles, and jewelry. Sturgeon grew visibly emotional when discussing a necklace Murrell gifted her for more than £400 from a Shetland jeweler. She recalled wearing the pendant frequently during campaigns before learning it was bought with embezzled funds. “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,” Sturgeon said. “I am just not sure I will ever properly come to terms with that.”
Sturgeon was arrested and questioned by detectives two months after Murrell’s initial arrest, but she was released without charge. She rejected the notion that she ignored warnings about the party’s finances, stating she wanted to avoid interfering with the police investigation. “If there had been anything in the accounts which could have alerted her the police might have reached a different position on me,” she told Kuenssberg.
The interview drew skepticism from some political figures. Former SNP MP Joanna Cherry, who resigned from the party’s ruling national executive committee in 2021 over transparency concerns, accused Sturgeon of evading the real issue. “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,” Cherry told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show.
Calls for further scrutiny have emerged across the political spectrum. UK government minister Pat McFadden backed Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar’s push for a Holyrood inquiry, warning that the Scottish Parliament must demonstrate it can address the situation. “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,” McFadden said. Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp added that trust in politics has been “fundamentally undermined” and called for a formal inquiry.
Current Scottish First Minister John Swinney has rejected those calls, arguing that the existing legal proceedings provide sufficient accountability. “We know exactly what happened,” Swinney said. “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.”
Sturgeon said she does not expect to be asked to contribute financially to the recovery of the stolen funds, noting that her marital home was not purchased with SNP money. While Murrell faces a lengthy prison term, Sturgeon emphasized the personal toll the scandal has taken on her. “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,” she said. “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.”