The questions raised by the Murrell embezzlement controversy
This embezzlement case has been hanging over the SNP like a toxic cloud since the police investigation began five years ago.
SNP strategists believe the controversy corroded trust in the party and cost them a significant amount of support.
They may just have been returned to government but the party is much less popular than it was at the last election.
Peter Murrell is not the first high profile political figure to end up before the criminal courts in Scotland but you would struggle to find such a vivid case.
Who can forget the police pitching their blue forensics tent in the garden of the house he shared with his wife Nicola Sturgeon (from whom he is now separated)?
The place looked like a murder scene even if the tent was only to prevent prying eyes seeing what officers were removing from the property.
Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell admits embezzling £400,000 in party funds
Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell admits embezzling party funds
There was a simultaneous search of SNP headquarters in Edinburgh and the confiscation of the now infamous motorhome from the Fife driveway of Murrell’s mother.
It all felt more like a TV drama script than news or documentary.
There were some in SNP circles who thought the police had seriously overstepped and would eventually face a reckoning. I suspect Murrell’s admission of guilt will make that go away.
The intrigue in this case is not just about Murrell’s position of power as a long-serving chief executive of the SNP.
His proximity to Sturgeon raises further questions as does the proximity of the police activity to her standing down as first minister.
The police moved just seven weeks after she announced her resignation and about a week after she officially left office.
At the news conference she held to say she was going, I asked if she had been or expected to be interviewed by police investigating the SNP’s finances.
She curtly replied that she would not comment on an ongoing investigation and left the room.
Moments later, I was advised by her team that the answer to my question was “no”.
Since then Sturgeon has repeatedly said that the police investigation, known as Operation Branchform, was not a factor in her decision to stand down.
In the course of the investigation, she was arrested, questioned and released without charge. The same happened with the former SNP Treasurer Colin Beattie.
When the police subsequently charged Murrell with embezzlement, they made clear that no further action would be taken with Sturgeon or Beattie.
That came as a relief to Sturgeon. She has always insisted that she has done nothing wrong – a position that she vigorously maintains.
She has posted on social media that she “had no knowledge or suspicion whatsoever that he was using SNP funds for personal purposes.
“I am utterly appalled that he did so and cannot begin to understand why.
“That I was fully cleared after a thorough investigation underlines that these were not my crimes. I was misled just as others were”.
Another question that arises. How was Nicola Sturgeon able to give private and public assurances about the SNP’s financial health?
“There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party’s finances” she told a meeting of the SNP’s ruling body in March 2021, warning its members against suggesting otherwise.
In a TV interview a few months later, she insisted that “money hasn’t gone missing”.
It is not clear on what basis she made these comments, what efforts she made as SNP leader to satisfy herself that all was well and to what extent she was relying on her husband’s word.
All of this raises a more fundamental question about where power lay in devolved Scottish politics between late 2014 and early 2023.
During that period it was concentrated in a single household, with Peter Murrell running the SNP and his wife Nicola Sturgeon leading that party and the Scottish government.
Her predecessor as first minister, Alex Salmond told me he had warned Murrell against this arrangement over lunch at an Edinburgh hotel.
I have not been able to verify this claim with Murrell but it is certainly the case that others in and around the SNP have raised similar concerns over the years.
These were clearly dismissed as the power couple arrangement continued until Sturgeon stood down.
We do not know what view the current first minister John Swinney took on this set up. He did not have a party role during these years but was Sturgeon’s closest colleague in government.
He was an old friend of Murrell and appointed him chief executive during his first spell as SNP leader in the early noughties. The wisdom of that move will now be questioned too.
As SNP leader now, Swinney presents his party as a victim of crime committed by the man he put in charge of the party.
He has said that the internal workings of the party have already been tightened up to guard against financial wrongdoing. The SNP may seek to recover some of what has been stolen from them.
The police investigation began when they received complaints that having raised more than £600,000 in donations for independence campaigning, the SNP had less than £100,000 in the bank.
Some of those who had given cash demanded to know where it had gone. Some have previously sought and in a small number of cases received refunds.
It is not impossible that others who donated might seek some sort of redress.
The SNP has always said that an amount equivalent to what it raised for independence campaigning will be spent on that purpose.
Before then, a judge must decide what sentence Peter Murrell should receive.
The former SNP MP Natalie McGarry was jailed for the embezzlement of a much smaller amount from an independence supporting group for women.
Scotland has become familiar with high profile political figures appearing in our criminal courts.
The socialist firebrand Tommy Sheridan was locked up in 2011 for telling lies in an earlier court case.
Then there was the trial of the former SNP first minister Alex Salmond who was cleared of sexual offences in 2020.
To that unsavoury list we must now add the name of Peter Murrell – the man who stole from the party and cause to which he had dedicated his adult life.
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