Sturgeon says she’s ‘serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit’

Nicola Sturgeon has said she feels as if she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” following the guilty plea of her estranged husband Peter Murrell.

Murrell plead guilty on Monday to embezzling £400,000 from the SNP and will be sentenced at the end of June.

Giving her first major interview since the guilty plea, Sturgeon told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg that she was “not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes”.

The former SNP leader re-iterated her position that she had been unaware Murrell was making purchases with money stolen from the party, including gifts she received.

And she defended herself for answering ‘no comment’ during an initial police interview, saying she was “terrified, bewildered and in a high state of stress and anxiety”.

She said: “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.”

And she said she didn’t have any “conscious memory” of seeing a £124,000 motorhome purchased by Murrell with embezzled funds parked outside the house of her mother-in-law.

“If I saw it, I probably would have assumed it was a neighbour’s,” she said.

“My mother and father-in-law were in their mid-80s, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind it was theirs. Why would it have crossed my mind that it was the SNP’s, that Peter had bought it?”

Asked if she ignored concerns about the party’s finances during her time as first minister, Sturgeon said: “By the time these concerns were being raised, the police were looking into the SNP finances.

“Until early 2023, there was no suggestion that what was being looked into with the finances was potential embezzlement…”

She said the “rejected completely” the idea that figures within the party were attempting to raise concerns about the “behaviour that Peter plead guilty to on Monday”.

At times fighting back tears during the interview, Sturgeon said: “[Murrell] has never sat down and given me his account [of what happened]. Now presumably I will hear his account from the court at some point, but he’s never given me an explanation.”

She added: “I am deeply sorry this has happened but Peter went to, as we now know, great lengths to cover his tracks.

“For my own sake but for the sake of people out there, a lot of women who find themselves blamed for the actions of men in their lives, I’m not going to contribute to that sense that I’m responsible for somebody else’s crimes.

“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.”

Since Monday’s guilty plea, First Minister John Swinney has been under pressure to agree to a parliamentary inquiry into the Murrell scandal.

At FMQs on Thursday he said there was no idea for such an investigation following the culmination of Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform.

But Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee may yet carry out an investigation, particularly amid claims that taxpayers’ money was among that embezzled by Murrell.

Following the BBC interview, Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said: “For years, Nicola Sturgeon cultivated an image of being a leader who missed nothing and was across every detail. 

“Now she asks the public to believe she had neither knowledge of nor curiosity about how these luxury purchases were being funded. While Nicola Sturgeon feels sorry for herself, my sympathy lies with the people of Scotland and SNP members who were deceived. 

“They placed their trust in the SNP leadership and have every right to feel let down by a party that has become synonymous with secrecy, evasion and unanswered questions.

“This scandal will not disappear through carefully managed interviews. Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney and the SNP must finally come clean to a parliamentary inquiry that can get the answers Scotland deserves.”

Former SNP MP Joanna 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.”