Nicola Sturgeon said she feels like she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her estranged husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Murrell pleaded guilty this week to embezzling the sum from the SNP between 2010 and 2022.
The 61-year-old spent the money on items including a motorhome, cars, kitchen gadgets, expensive watches and pens, and more mundane purchases such as hand cream and toilet seats.
He is set to be sentenced in June, the same month that the SNP faces two by-election contests – one in Aberdeen South and another in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
The SNP has faced calls for an independent inquiry into its finances.
Ms Sturgeon was Scotland’s first minister from 2014 to 2023 while Murrell served as the SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Ms Sturgeon said she is “not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes”.
She said: “For my own sake, but for the sake of people out there, a lot of women who end up finding themselves blamed for the actions of the men in their lives, I’m not going to contribute to that kind of sense that I am responsible for somebody else’s crimes.
“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.”
Ms Sturgeon previously said she had been “completely cleared and exonerated” by police and that she had been lied to by her former husband.
“(Murrell) perpetrated a crime on the SNP,” she told the BBC.
“By definition, that included me as the party leader. He misled. He deceived.
“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.”
