NICOLA Sturgeon has revealed the deep pain her estranged husband Peter Murrell’s crimes caused her in her first TV interview since he pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP.
The former first minister insisted she had never suspected her husband of swindling party funds and addressed long-standing questions about accounts she approved.
Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Sturgeon said Murrell had “betrayed” her and spoke of the “trauma” he had suffered.
These are the key points from Nicola Sturgeon’s interview…
'No memory' of seeing motorhome
One of the most eye-catching elements to the story of how Murrell defrauded the SNP was the revelation he had bought a campervan with party funds.
It had been parked at his parents’ house and Sturgeon has faced questions over her claims to have been unaware of its existence.
In the interview, the former FM said she did not have “any conscious memory of seeing that motorhome”.
She said: “There’s a motorhome between their house and somebody else’s house that I don’t remember consciously registering, if I had I would have probably subliminally just discounted it as belonging to a neighbour. What would have made me think, ‘hold on a wee second, is that somehow something my former husband’s bought for the SNP?’”
But the motorhome had been listed on party accounts that Sturgeon signed off on while leader, Kuenssberg pointed out. Sturgeon replied: “From memory now that I’ve seen it, it doesn’t say motorhome, it says motor vehicles.”
She added: “That could have been the rental of motor vehicles or something like that, so it didn’t particular jump out as something that caused me to question things”
'Never asked' about £80,000 Jaguar
Another of Murrell’s more extravagant purchases was a Jaguar worth £80,000. Sturgeon said the car did not raise red flags for her.
She said: “Peter has had cars in all the time we’ve been together, he would change his car periodically, I didn’t drive, I had no interest in cars.
“He bought a Jaguar, he wanted to change to an electric car, he told me that, you know, the range on the Jaguar was one that he thought was good and I, again, I know a Jaguar is an expensive car, but we were on high salaries.”
A key plank of Sturgeon’s argument in defence of not noticing her estranged husband’s lavish spending has been her and Murrell’s wealth. While he was chief executive and she was first minister, the childless couple were both earning more than £100,000 a year each.
Sturgeon said: “We were two people on high salaries, we don’t have children, we didn’t have, you know, an extensive social life, mainly because of the pressures of my job, we very rarely went on holiday, so we had incomes that would, as far as I could see, would have supported anything that I was seeing in my house.”
Doesn’t see herself as a 'victim'
Sturgeon became visibly emotional when she spoke about how her favourite necklace, given to her as a present by Murrell, had been bought with illicit funds.
But she said she did not see herself as a victim. Sturgeon said: “I’m a working class girl from the west of Scotland, I don’t like victim terminology, I will never think of myself as a victim.
“The SNP’s the victim in this crime and that hurts me too, because I joined the SNP at aged 16, it’s not just a political party to me, and obviously I led it for almost a decade, the SNP is like my extended family.”
£300,000 drop in accounts ‘not unusual’
Sturgeon’s oversight of the SNP’s accounts also came under scrutiny as she defended not raising concerns about a £300,000 drop in the party’s income in 2019.
She said: “The balance sheet would fluctuate, so it would not have been unusual to see changes in that. But it was also the case that whether in 2017 or 2019, the party was able to spend around £1 million in each of these election campaigns.”
Her response to ‘transparency’ concerns
Sturgeon rejected claims that she had been warned about problems with the SNP’s finances as early as 2021, when then-treasurer Douglas Chapman quit his position over a lack of transparency.
She said: “The idea there was anything in the accounts that would have alerted me to what Peter pled guilty to on Monday is absolutely fundamentally untrue.
“And if there had been, I suspect the police and the Crown Office might have reached a different position on me, and they wouldn’t have completely cleared me and taken absolutely no action against me in the way that happened.”
Pressed on the issue of the £600,000 raised as an independence campaign fighting fund, which triggered the police investigation into the SNP’s finances, Sturgeon said: “Until probably early 2023, there was no suggestion that what was being looked into in terms of the finances was potential embezzlement.
“The issue that was being looked into was whether the £600,000 that had been raised to fund a second independent referendum had been used for election campaigning. And my comments were saying that the £600,000, although it didn’t sit in a separate bank account, was there and realisable for a referendum campaign when that happened.”
She added: “There were accusations being made at the time that we didn’t really want an independence referendum, that we’d raised this money on false pretences. That’s what was being referred to [when the SNP accused people of spreading ‘conspiracy theories’].”
Feels like she is ‘serving a sentence’ for Murrell’s crimes
The former first minister opened up about the pain the revelations about her husband’s criminal activities has caused her.
She said: “I'm sure Peter's not having the time of his life right now, but he's not the one having to answer questions and be vilified.
“I think my face has been on more front pages this week than his has. He's 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.”
Why she gave no comment in police interview
Another issue on which Sturgeon has faced scrutiny is why she gave no comment in her police interview, despite previously pledging to cooperate fully with their inquiries.
She said: “I found myself arrested and being interviewed by the police, I was in a state of almost complete collapse, I was terrified, I was bewildered, I was in a state of high stress and anxiety.
“I instructed a lawyer, a very experienced lawyer, who told me that he was going to advise me to do the same as he advises every client in that situation, is to not answer the questions then in such a state of stress, and if I wanted to do that afterwards, I could do that in the way I did.
“I accepted that advice, and I would challenge anybody in the state I was in there to go in and do something different to what a very experienced lawyer was advising them to do.
“In the aftermath of that interview, I prepared a very detailed written document answering the questions that had been put to me and that was sent by my lawyer to both the Crown Office and the police in the summer of 2023. I heard nothing more.”
