NICOLA Sturgeon has said the “assumption” that she knew her estranged husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, had bought items with party funds is “completely wrong” insisting she never saw many of the items mentioned in court documents.
In an interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, Scotland's former first minister said she “absolutely didn’t know” that Murrell was “committing crimes” and that anger does not "begin to cover" how she feels about her ex-husband.
Sturgeon’s comments come after Murrell pleaded guilty this week to embezzling the sum of more than £400,000 from the SNP between 2010 and 2022. He is set to be sentenced in June.
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.
When asked in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme that she did not notice any of the many items Murrell bought after embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP, Sturgeon said she had not seen many of the items mentioned in court documents.
“I absolutely didn’t know that he was committing crimes,” she said.
“Look, I understand that question, it’s human nature, if I was on the outside looking in on this happening to somebody else, it’s very probably a question I would be asking too.
“I think that question though is based on a lot of assumptions that are perhaps understandable but are completely wrong.
“The first assumption is that I knew about all of the things that he was purchasing, there’s a lot of the items that have been mentioned in the court documents and therefore by extension in the press that I wasn’t aware of, these are things I had never seen.
“I’m reading – and some of it I was reading on Monday, the day he pled guilty for the first time, items that I just wasn’t aware of. And that’s quite difficult for me to come to terms with.”
Sturgeon added: “Some of the items I was aware of, including things he bought for me as gifts and presented to me as gifts that he had bought for me, none of these things I would have looked at and thought how on Earth could he afford them.
“We were two people on high salaries, we don’t have children, we didn’t have 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.”
The former SNP leader continued: “I think the other thing is just a fact of life, I was the first minister of the country.
“I was working round the clock most days, I wasn’t at home very often, I didn’t take much if anything to do with the administration of our household.
“I mean, just to explain how our finances worked, we had separate bank accounts, I never had any access to his bank account, he didn’t have any to mine, every month I would pass him a sum of money to cover my share of the household expenses and leave him to it, and give him a bit more because I was first minister, occasionally I’d phone him up and say I’ve run out of something, will you get me this, so, no, I didn’t know.
“I’m not the first and unfortunately I’m sure I won't be the last woman to be betrayed and lied to and misled by her husband and that’s what happened.”
Sturgeon has denied any knowledge of Murrell's crimes, committed between 2010 and 2022, and was the SNP party leader between 2014 and 2023. The former first minister was not charged, following a police investigation.
Sturgeon told Kuenssberg that Murrell, who served as the SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023, “misled” and “deceived” the party.
She said: “Am I angry with him? I don’t even think that begins to cover it.
“Because not only has he lied to me and betrayed me – and if this was an entirely private thing, that would be bad enough – I mean, I’ve been genuinely touched this week by some of the messages I’ve had by women who’ve been betrayed by their husbands, lied to by their husbands, not in identical circumstances, although some in, you know, not dissimilar circumstances, and speaking to me about the, just the depth of hurt they feel, and I feel all of that.
“But it’s more than that. He has put me into a position of real peril, he has subjected me to public vilification, having the finger of suspicion pointed at me – you know, humiliation.”
