Nicola Sturgeon has said feels like she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her former husband and former Scottish National party 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 to fund a lavish personal lifestyle.
The 61-year-old spent the money on items including a luxury motor home, a Jaguar SUV and a VW Golf, boutique cosmetics, iPads and a Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper set worth £2,618.
He will be sentenced in June, the same month that the SNP faces two UK parliamentary byelections – one in Aberdeen South and another in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
The SNP has faced calls for an independent inquiry into its finances. Sturgeon was Scotland’s first minister from 2014 to 2023 while Murrell served as the party’s chief executive from 2001 to 2023.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Sturgeon said she was “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.”
Sturgeon, 55, has consistently denied knowledge of Murrell’s crimes and was not charged after a police investigation. The former first minister previously said she had been “completely cleared and exonerated” by police and that she had been lied to by her former husband.
On Sunday, Sturgeon said her former husband had “perpetrated a crime on the SNP”, adding: “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.”
Speaking at the Hay festival in Powys on Friday, Sturgeon said: “My picture has been on more front pages in Scotland this week than my former husband’s has, and I don’t think that’s right.”
She said she had been contacted by a number of women last week who had been “betrayed” by their husbands and that she was “determined to carry on”, adding: “I’ve done nothing wrong. So I’m not going to hide away. And that’s why I’m here.”
