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LAST week, ahead of Peter Murrell’s sentencing for embezzling £400,000 from the SNP, media were invited to Police Scotland headquarters for a briefing on the investigation which ultimately revealed his crimes.
At Tulliallan Castle, in Fife, journalists were told inside details of Operation Branchform, including how officers had uncovered Murrell’s criminality, why the forensic blue tent was set up outside the home he shared with Nicola Sturgeon, and how officials reached the decision not to charge the former first minister with any crimes.
However, journalists were also barred from reporting any of the information publicly until the former SNP chief executive had been sentenced.
On Tuesday, Murrell was given five years and three months in prison at the High Court in Edinburgh , and the reporting restrictions have been lifted.
Here are 11 of the key points which we learned from the police’s media briefing.
How it all started
The investigation was sparked on March 25, 2021, when the well known Scottish activist Sean Clerkin walked into a police station and filed a complaint about what the SNP had done with around £660,000 raised to fight a second independence referendum.
Police then received more than 10 further complaints from people who had given money to the SNP’s indyref fund and were concerned about how it had been used.
The resulting investigation initially focused on claims of fraud. Although insufficient evidence was found to prove that allegation, police did find suspicious transactions that pointed to Peter Murrell’s embezzlement. That opened a new line of inquiry.
Not enough evidence of fraud – but evidence of embezzlement
Two years into the investigation, by early spring 2023, police had concluded that there was simply not enough evidence that fraud had been committed for anyone to be charged.
According to prosecutors, a fraud case would depend on demonstrating that an individual who solicited funds for the indyref campaign did so with the intention of defrauding contributors.
However, by October 2022 – around the time of a National Crime Agency (NCA) review of the investigation – officers had twigged that there was something wrong with SNP payments, and suspicions were focusing on Murrell.
It was around this period, officials said, that police knew that the SNP chief executive had not only been putting items into the wrong accounting categories in the books (or miscoding them), but also inputting codes for items that didn’t even exist.
Ultimately, Murrell pleaded guilty to crimes committed from August 2010 to October 2022, meaning he continued embezzling even as the NCA and Police Scotland probed the SNP’s finances.
However, the initial standard prosecution report (SPR) which police submitted for Murrell on May 23, 2024 contained a single charge of embezzlement with a date range from January 1, 2016 to January 13, 2023.
Police were later able to evidentially establish embezzlement from at least 2010, but acknowledged that data retention limits mean they cannot say what did or did not happen before then.
Any charges dating after 2022 were removed as part of the deal which saw Murrell plead guilty in May.
Whether to charge Nicola Sturgeon
In June 2023, Nicola Sturgeon was arrested and questioned amid the police probe into the SNP’s finances – which by then was not focused on fraud, but embezzlement by her now-estranged husband.
The arrest meant that there was a sufficiency of evidence to arrest her on suspicion, police said, so she was brought in as a suspect. She then gave a “no-comment” interview.
However, ultimately officers did not report Sturgeon to face charges, and prosecutors decided that was the right course of action.
Operation Branchform resulted in a 542-page report being sent to Crown Counsel, who decided that Murrell should be prosecuted for embezzlement, but Sturgeon (and Beattie) should not face charges or further investigation.
As an additional safeguard, those conclusions were considered independently by another KC who reached the same view, the Crown Office said.
On August 9, 2024, police had submitted a request to the Crown Office for advice and guidance on Sturgeon and Beattie, but this was focused on whether there should be further investigation. It did not seek prosecution of either of the two for embezzlement or fraud.
The Crown Office told media that the decision not to charge Sturgeon had not been marginal or finely balanced.
The first major red flag
Murrell had a fondness for Le Creuset, and dozens of items from the cookware brand were listed in the charges to which he pleaded guilty.
Police said it was this particular penchant that first rang alarm bells for investigators.
Officials said that at one point when the SNP accounts were at a low, during the natural ebb and flow of political funding, officers noticed that expensive Le Creuset items were being billed to the party.
That raised questions, and led officers to notice that expenditure was being put under the wrong category in the ledgers (or miscoded).
Ultimately, Murrell also used embezzled money to buy scores of other luxury items, including fountain pens, coffee machines, and drinks accessories such as a £3500 wine coaster.
Why the blue tent?
In April 2023, when Police Scotland searched Murrell’s home – which he shared with former first minister Sturgeon – they erected a blue forensic tent outside the front door.
The decision to put up the tent raised eyebrows at the time, with then-SNP MP Allan Dorans – who served as a police officer for 15 years – saying he had “never” seen the same done in similar cases.
Police at the briefing accepted that it was unusual to put up the forensic tent and said they had taken a hit for doing so – but said that ultimately the ends justified the means.
The tent allowed officers to search the property and remove items linked to Murrell’s embezzlement without fear that anything could be photographed by the media and compromise the integrity of the investigation.
How police clocked the motorhome
Unlike the myriad minor purchases which Murrell made with embezzled money (like an egg poacher, Sherlock Holmes DVD, or a laundry basket) the motorhome was a very large transaction which went through the SNP’s bank account. This made it much easier to trace to the retailer, and to see that the purchase documents had been doctored by Murrell.
However, when news first broke that the £125,000 motorhome had been purchased with SNP funds, party sources initially tried to rationalise it in the media; one insider claimed that it had been planned for use as a campaign battle bus.
However, police said this did not stack up as the motorhome was insured to Murrell for social, domestic, and commuting purposes, not for anything related to business or the party.
When it was seized there was no sign that the motorhome had been used, police said, and it had just four miles on the clock.
The SNP voluntarily handed items over to the police
After Murrell resigned as SNP chief executive in March 2023, he was ultimately replaced in the role by Murray Foote – the former Daily Record editor and SNP communications chief.
Once Foote was in place, police said, the SNP handed the force around 20 items that were apparently owned by the party despite there not being any legitimate use for them.
Officials further told reporters that no SNP witnesses had refused to co-operate with the investigation.
However, Murrell and Sturgeon gave no-comment interviews, while former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie, who was also arrested amid Operation Branchform, answered some of what was put to him, police said.
Police stressed that people are well within their rights to choose to answer questions with “no comment”, and noted that Sturgeon had provided a witness statement later that addressed some of what they had asked.
In total, the Crown Office said that prosecutors had considered 516 witness statements and a large volume of documentary and digital material, including data sources containing tens of thousands of files.
They found that three SNP credit cards were used to commit the crimes, but only one was in Murrell’s name. He had access to the two in staffers’ names, and used them for purchases now linked to the embezzlement, with a full chain of evidence leading back to him.
The indictment, the guilty plea, and what was stripped out
When the charges against Murrell first became public in February 2026, he was facing allegations of having embezzled £459,046.49 of SNP funds over a 13-year period (2010-2023).
However, he ultimately pleaded guilty to misusing £400,310.65 over a 12-year period (2010-2022).
Prosecutors said that they had taken the decision to accept the slightly lesser value in his guilty plea as it would make no difference to the ultimate outcome in terms of sentencing.
It also allowed them to save public money by not going to a full trial, as well as finish the case more rapidly, as a court date would likely have been set for 2027.
The Crown Office also said that the SNP were told on May 22, 2026 that Murrell would plead guilty, three days before he made the plea in public on May 25.
At his sentencing on Tuesday, judge Lord Young said that Murrell would have been given seven years in prison for his crimes, but this was reduced to five years and three months due to the guilty plea.
Public money at risk?
Questions have been asked about whether Murrell may have embezzled public money from the SNP accounts. He may have had access to grants from the UK Parliament and Electoral Commission .
Once public funds entered the SNP’s main bank account, they were mixed with all other income streams, investigators said.
This was also the case for the roughly £600,000 raised for a second independence referendum campaign, and no separate “ring-fenced” account to hold this funding ever existed.
Police noted that third parties, such as the Electoral Commission, were satisfied that the SNP’s reported spend of public funds matched what they’d been given for those purposes.
The force also said that the SNP has an internal logging system in place allowing them to track how much money has been received from donations and where it has been spent.
Police said that money embezzled by Murrell ultimately came from the SNP’s primary source of income: donations.
The warrants
The police “day of action” on April 5, 2023 – in which Murrell’s home, his mother’s driveway, and SNP headquarters were searched – had been planned out weeks in advance by a small team of need-to-know people.
Police Scotland submitted a request for applications related to the three addresses on March 20, 2023, and a sheriff granted the warrants on April 3.
During the investigation additional orders were also obtained to secure material held by banking institutions in Scotland and England, retailers in England, HMRC, and organisations holding SNP accounting information, the Crown Office said.
How the probe was run
The Crown Office had a dedicated team of seven people working on the case: four procurator fiscal deputes and three paralegal case preparers.
This team prepared the case and reported to Crown Counsel for them to issue instructions, which were separately run by a second KC before moving forward.
From the moment the investigation began, because it involved the SNP, the law officers – Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain and Solicitor General for Scotland Ruth Charteris – had no operational involvement, the Crown Office said.
Decisions were taken and only transmitted to the law officers once it could not be influenced.
After Murrell’s sentencing, the now-Lord Advocate Ruth Charteris KC said: “I played no part in the investigation or prosecution of this case. Now that proceedings have concluded, I want to acknowledge what has been a lengthy and high-profile case conducted under significant scrutiny.”
She added: “I am grateful to Police Scotland for their investigation and wish to recognise the work of the professional prosecutors from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, and Crown Counsel, who have carried out their work with integrity and diligence.”
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