Nicola Sturgeon has said she feels like she’s “serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit” as she spoke about her estranged husband’s embezzlement of £400,000 of SNP party funds.
Peter Murrell embezzled funds between 2010 and 2022, but Ms Sturgeon denies any knowledge of his wrongdoing.
In a bombshell interview, the former SNP leader said: “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 led the SNP as party leader between 2014 and 2023, and shared responsibility for managing the party’s finances.
She continued to tell the BBC: “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.”
When asked if she bore any responsibility, due to her role, she said: “No, he perpetrated a crime on the SNP. By definition, that included me as the party leader. He misled. He deceived.
Nicola Sturgeon refused to apologise for her estranged husband’s crimes
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PA/BBC
“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.”
The largest transaction Murrell made was for a motorhome costing £124,550, which he kept at his mother’s house.
When quizzed about it, the former SNP leader said she had no “conscious memory” of seeing the motorhome, saying it was “round the sides of the house which is not immediately visible in the way that we went into the home”.
She added: “It was between their house and the next-door neighbour’s.”
PICTURED: Nicola Sturgeon wearing a necklace that Murrell bought her using embezzled funds
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Ms Sturgeon became visibly emotional when speaking about a necklace gifted to her by her estranged husband that cost more than £400, which she was seen wearing in public.
She told the BBC: “I’d been campaigning a lot in Shetland and we went to visit, as part of the campaign, we went to visit this amazing business, the Shetland jewellers, and I was being shown around the shop and I stopped at this pendant.
“I mean, you’ve seen pictures of it, it’s beautiful.
“Later that night, Peter said to me ‘I’ve got a surprise for you’ and ‘I saw you admiring this pendant’ and gave me it.
Nicola Sturgeon said she feels like she’s ‘serving a sentence for a crime I didn’t commit’
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PA/BBC
“The idea that I would have gone about wearing things that I had known were anything other than what they were presented as, a gift from my husband… to then find out that these were gifts given to me that he’d bought with the party’s money causes a level of, I don’t know, pain, bewilderment.
“I don’t know, I just… I’m not sure. I’m going to try.
“I am just not sure I will ever properly come to terms with that.”
She said she aimed to be careful of “stepping on the toes” of the police investigation into SNP finances.