Peter Murrell has been jailed for five years and three months after embezzling over £400,000 from SNP funds.
The former chief executive of the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband used the money to make hundreds of purchases.
These included a £124,550 motorhome, cars, jewellery, luxury homewares and designer stationery.
He also falsified accounting records and issued fake invoices to cover up his wrongdoing.
Murrell embezzled a total of £400,310.65 over a 12-year period between August 2010 and October 2022.
Delivering the sentence in the High Court in Edinburgh, Judge Lord Young described his actions as “a calculated crime of dishonesty”, with a “large number of fraudulent acts over a 12-month period while you were chief executive officer of the SNP”.
He said: “You found yourself unable to stop this offending, and it was only the detection of the crime which brought it to an end.
“Your actions involved a significant breach of trust to the organisation which you led, and to the individual members and donors of that organisation because of your position of authority.”
Peter Murrell has been jailed for five years and three months after embezzling £400k from SNP funds
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PA
The sentence would have been a seven-year jail term if it were not for Murrell’s guilty plea at a preliminary hearing.
The Judge also said the sentence would act as a “deterrent to any senior officials”.
He told the defendant: “Let me make it clear to you, one factor in the sentence which I imposed today will be to act as a deterrent to any senior officials in other large organisations who might be tempted to abuse their position in the way that you did, or on any of you.”
Murrell’s defence barrister, John Scullion KC, told the High Court in Edinburgh that the former chief executive of the SNP intended to repay the full amount of money he embezzled from the party.
The former chief executive of the SNP and Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband used the money to make hundreds of purchases
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GB NEWS
He added: “For many months he has lived in almost total isolation.”
He said his client accepted blame and he had been “ostracised” by his former colleagues.
Mr Scullion said he had become a “figure of public ridicule” as a result of his purchases.
Murrel will serve at least 50 per cent of his sentence in jail before he becomes eligible for parole, meaning he will most likely spend two and a half years behind bars.
The court was told that Peter Murrell had been assessed as a low risk of reoffending
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PA
The court was told that the disgraced figure had been assessed as a low risk of reoffending.
Having entered the dock of the court shortly after 9.30am, after arriving in a prison van, Murrell was escorted out of the courtroom.
The court previously heard that Murrell’s role enabled him to make direct transfers of cash from the party’s main bank account, which held funds from “membership fees and donations paid by party members and other donors and legacies”.
Murrell also used multiple party “charge cards” and made several false expense claims.