Ex-SNP chief grilled over spending £19,000 on luxury pens in police interview

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Nicola Sturgeon’s ex-husband and former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell has been sentenced to prison for embezzling hundreds of pounds of party funds.

Murrell spent £400,000 embezzled from the party on a vast array of items from the flashy to the mundane over several years.

They included gifts for Sturgeon, expensive kitchen gadgets and – most famously – a motorhome which he parked beside his parents’ house.

Sturgeon, who served as Scotland’s First Minister for nine years, denied any knowledge of her then-husband’s crimes. The couple have since separated.

In his sentencing remarks, Judge Lord Young said Murrell used his position at the top of the party to ‘circumvent checks and balances’, and described his actions as a ‘significant breach of trust’.

He added that it is ‘very difficult to get a clear picture for what drove [Murrell’s] actions’.

The former chief executive of Scotland’s party of government was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.

Due to his guilty plea, this sentence was reduced from seven years, the judge explained.

Following the sentencing, the Scottish Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service released footage of a police interview, in which Murrell was quizzed on his tactics when carrying out the crimes.

Highlighting one particularly extravagant example, an officer asks: ‘What does the SNP need over £19,000 of luxury pens for?’

Murrell spent more than two decades as SNP chief executive, from shortly after the creation of the Scottish Parliament until his resignation in 2023.