Without an inquiry, the Murrell scandal will continue to dog John Swinney

Peter Murrell, former SNP chief executive and estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, will this week be sentenced for embezzling more than £400,000 from the party he once ran. Police Scotland’s long-running Operation Branchform, first launched in 2021, culminated in Murrell’s guilty plea at the High Court in Edinburgh late last month. But while the former SNP supremo has admitted his crimes, questions remain over how he was able to go undetected by the party for so long and whether taxpayer money was among his ill-gotten gains. 

There had been much speculation about the state of the SNP’s finances by the time Branchform got underway in July 2021, not long after the election which saw Sturgeon’s party returned to power at Holyrood – one seat short of an overall majority. After a series of complaints about how money donated to a Scottish independence fighting fund had been spent, Police Scotland opened a formal investigation even as Sturgeon said she was “not concerned” about the state of the party’s books. That was despite the resignation of party treasurer Douglas Chapman, then MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, just over a month earlier and the departure of Joanna Cherry, who quit the SNP’s management board in a row over “transparency and scrutiny”.

If questions remain over the £660,000 donated to the fundraiser (more of that later) then the police investigation soon began moving in a different direction, leading to the arrest of Murrell in April 2023 and the seizure of a £124,550 Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e motorhome which had been parked at his mother’s home in Dunfermline. Sturgeon had resigned less than two months earlier, telling a hastily arranged press conference at Bute House that “in my head and in my heart” she knew it was the right time to go. As she drew the event to a close, she was asked one final question – by the BBC’s Glenn Campbell – on whether she had been interviewed by the police as part of Branchform. Furrowing her brow, the SNP leader refused to be drawn, but just a few months later, in June of that year, she was arrested and questioned by police, an interview during which we now know she mostly answered, ‘no comment’. 

Ultimately no charges were ever brought against Sturgeon or SNP treasurer Colin Beattie, who was also arrested and questioned by police, but Murrell was re-arrested and charged in April 2024 and would later plead guilty to embezzlement. The pitching of a blue forensic tent outside the couple’s Uddingston home, to the evident displeasure of many of their supporters, made a lot more sense when a list of the items bought by Murrell using stolen money – some of which were seized by police – were made public. They included coffee machines totalling £8,991, two Lalique salt and pepper grinders costing £2,618, a £3,070 robotic lawnmower and a silver wine coaster from Hamilton & Inches jewellers costing £3,500.  

In a narrative presented by prosecutors earlier this month, it emerged Murrell had created false invoices to help cover his tracks. When he spent more than £9,000 on Bremont watches, items later found by police during a search of SNP headquarters, the transactions were recorded as “event merchandise” on the party’s accounting software. A silicone egg poacher, which cost £23.98, was recorded as computer hardware and described as “ethernet cabling”. Murrell also used party charge cards, racking up over £42,000 in Amazon purchases alone over a 12-year period and spending nearly £140,000 at other retailers. While many of these items were seized by police, others such as a fitted home library (which was paid for partly with SNP funds) and a wooden library ladder that Sturgeon was once photographed with were left “in situ”. 

Murrell is expected to be sentenced on Tuesday 23 June, during which his mitigation will be heard by the court. But while that may provide some answers as to the ‘why’ of his crimes, questions remain for both the SNP and Scottish politics more broadly about how this was allowed to happen. First Minister John Swinney, a childhood friend of Murrell who appointed him SNP chief executive in 2001, has been quick to paint his party as the victim and shut down calls for a parliamentary inquiry. 

With the support of the Scottish Greens, the SNP scuppered Scottish Labour’s attempt to establish a Holyrood investigation. Instead, MSPs backed a non-binding Green amendment lodged by party co-leader Ross Greer which proposed an independent review of party finances and called for the devolution of powers surrounding the regulation of political parties and their funding. Greer said Murrell “wasn’t the man I thought he was” after it emerged he had deleted an embarrassing tweet from 2023 in which he thanked the former SNP chief executive for securing him a 25 per cent pay rise while working for Yes Scotland. 

There could yet be an inquiry at Westminster, however, after the cross-party Scottish Affairs Committee deferred a decision until after the Scottish Parliament debate, saying Holyrood was the “most appropriate place” for such a probe to be carried out. The committee of MPs has written to the Electoral Commission in the meantime. Meanwhile, the SNP has written to HMRC to highlight the possibility the party may have received VAT relief on fraudulent purchases made by Murrell and disguised as legitimate party expenses. 

After being trailed around various literary festivals by journalists, Sturgeon gave an interview to Laura Kuenssberg, telling her she felt as if she was “serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit”.

“I will take responsibility for the things I do, the decisions I make,” Sturgeon said. “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.”

While Sturgeon insists she had no knowledge of what her husband was up to, there are nevertheless questions over her role in signing off the SNP’s accounts. Before Chapman quit as treasurer, Sturgeon shut down attempts to raise concerns about the party’s finances, telling the National Executive Committee (NEC) during a Zoom call in March 2021 that the party had “never been in a stronger financial position” and warning others to be “very careful” about suggesting there were problems. 

In a tweet earlier this month, Chapman said those who sought to open the party’s books and audit the accounts to find out what happened to the supposedly ring-fenced independence money had been “vilified” and “diminished” by the SNP hierarchy.

“Senior people in the SNP failed to support the wishes of the SNP membership, who through effectively sacking Colin Beattie, wanted improved transparency,” Chapman said. He said Sturgeon and Swinney along with former Westminster leader Ian Blackford were “all culpable”.

Swinney answers question about the Murrell case at Holyrood | Alamy

The fundraiser was launched in 2017 and went on to raise more than £660,000 before being wound up. Ostensibly created to help support a second independence campaign, the SNP assured those donating that the money would be “ring-fenced” for that specific purpose. But when Swinney was asked about the so-called “fighting fund” earlier this month, he said the money had been spent on “SNP activities” and would not be drawn on whether any of it was used to reimburse the Weirs, the independence-supporting couple who loaned money to the SNP after winning a £161m Euromillions jackpot. As a result, the issue has again been reported to the police, this time by Stuart Campbell, whose Wings over Scotland blog has long asked searching questions of the SNP’s financial propriety. Police Scotland has previously said it won’t re-investigate the matter. 

There are questions too in all of this for Scotland’s criminal justice system, namely new Lord Advocate Ruth Charteris who holds the dual role of the country’s chief prosecutor and legal adviser to Scottish ministers. Charteris replaced Dorothy Bain, who was criticised for providing Swinney with updates on the Murrell case, including the original sum he was charged with embezzling – 10 months before an indictment was served and the details were put into the public domain. And a decision by the court to move Murrell’s preliminary hearing – at which he made his guilty plea – until after the election spared the SNP considerable embarrassment ahead of the vote. 

While a Holyrood inquiry would inevitability become partisan and would likely be obstructed and undermined at every turn by the SNP, there are possible alternatives. Former first minister Jack McConnell has suggested a joint inquiry by the parliaments in Edinburgh and London which he said would help avoid accusations Holyrood was presiding over a “cover-up” or that Westminster was carrying out a “hatchet job” on the SNP.

But an even better option would be a short, sharp investigation carried out by someone non-political who has the confidence of all Scotland’s political parties, albeit finding such a person would be difficult in the current climate.

On the face of it, this scandal has not unduly damaged the SNP. Despite it rumbling away in the background for the past five years, the party was returned to government following last month’s election, losing just a handful of seats in the process. Since Murrell’s guilty plea and the attendant press coverage, the Nationalists have recorded what one source described as a “significant uptick” in donations. While you have to wonder about those who respond to fraud and the party’s unwillingness to ask searching questions of itself by handing over more of their hard-earned cash, the SNP’s association with the cause of independence will always afford it a certain bouncebackability. 

And yet for as long as he remains leader, Swinney will be dogged by questions about this scandal and how it could happen. While it was Sturgeon’s job to sign off the accounts, he was her second in command. When Murrell finally quit as chief executive in March 2023 having lied about SNP membership figures – one of the many things he falsified during his time in post – Swinney expressed his thanks for the “enormous contribution” his friend had made to the party. A month later Murrell was arrested for the first time. 

Sturgeon’s reputation has been badly damaged in the three years since she left office. But the former first minister has now left the stage, attempting to move to a post-politics future of book festivals and jeopardy-free media appearances. Her former deputy first minister has helped steady the ship since her departure but now finds himself captaining a minority government assailed on all sides. With Murrell likely behind bars for the foreseeable future, Swinney will hope the questions surrounding this embarrassing scandal begin to fade. Continuing to answer with the political equivalent of ‘no comment’ should only get him so far.