FORMER SNP chief executive Peter Murrell will appear in court on Monday, where he is expected to enter a plea on charges of embezzlement.
Murrell, who served as SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023, is accused of embezzling £460,000 from the party over 13 years, as well as falsifying documents.
He will appear at the High Court in Edinburgh on May 25 for a Criminal Preliminary Hearing, according to the court rolls. Preliminary hearings generally see the accused enter a plea of guilty or not guilty, and are used to ensure that prosecutors and the defence will be ready for trial.
Murrell had been due to appear at the High Court in Glasgow for a preliminary hearing on February 20. However, one week before the date came, the hearing was pushed back to May and moved to Edinburgh.
The former SNP chief executive, who is also the estranged husband of former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, faces charges including:
- Embezzlement of £459,046.49 of SNP funds over a 13-year period (2010–2023).
- Purchase of a £124,550 motorhome (Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e) using SNP funds for personal use.
- Creation of false duplicate sales documents relating to the motorhome to portray it as a legitimate party expense.
- Use of £16,489 of SNP funds towards a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf in 2016.
- Use of £57,500 of SNP funds towards an £81,000 Jaguar I-Pace in 2019, and allegedly creating a false invoice to disguise the purchase.
- Claiming £18,408.91 in expenses he was allegedly not entitled to, including alleged false invoices.
- Spending £159,757.39 of SNP funds at 82 retailers on items allegedly for personal use or the use of others (2014–2022).
- Spending £81,610.19 of SNP funds on Amazon purchases (2010–2023), allegedly for personal use or others, and recorded in a way said to disguise their true nature.
The charges came after Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform, a long-running investigation into the SNP’s finances, which on Sunday was revealed to have cost more than £2 million.
The bill for the investigation stood at £2,173,089 as of April 30, the force said in response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request put in by Scottish Labour.
Police Scotland said £100,498 has been spent on overtime in the five years since the investigation began. The force also said the £2m figure does not include pension contributions, and do not cover the costs accrued by the Crown Office.
Operation Branchform was launched in 2021 following a complaint about what the SNP had done with more than £600,000 raised from the general public with the stated aim of fighting a second independence referendum.
Murrell resigned as SNP chief executive in March 2023, one month after Sturgeon resigned as first minister.
He was arrested the following month, in April 2023, and questioned by detectives while his and Sturgeon’s Uddingston home and the SNP's headquarters were searched. He was then released without charge.
However, one year later, in April 2024, Murrell was re-arrested and charged with embezzlement.
In March 2025, Sturgeon and former SNP treasurer Colin Beattie, who had also been arrested and questioned over the course of the police probe into the party's finances, were both cleared after the investigation was closed.
Two months prior, in January 2025, Sturgeon had announced that she and Murrell were splitting up after 15 years of marriage and 22 years together.
