Former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell charged in finance investigation

Peter Murrell, the husband of the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon, has been charged in connection with embezzlement after being arrested for a second time by police investigating allegations regarding the funding and finances of the Scottish National party.

Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, was first arrested and interviewed as a suspect by Police Scotland detectives in April 2023 at the home he shared with Sturgeon in Glasgow, but was released later that day pending further investigation.

In a series of linked operations, detectives also searched the party’s headquarters in Edinburgh and confiscated a luxury motorhome parked in the driveway of Murrell’s 92-year-old mother in Dunfermline.

They later arrested the party’s then treasurer, the SNP MSP Colin Beattie, at his home in Midlothian, interviewing him under caution before releasing him without charge on the same day.

Operation Branchform was launched by Police Scotland in July 2021 after a series of complaints about the SNP’s finances, which focused on the status of £667,000 in donations for a pro-independence fighting fund.

The Scottish Conservatives’ chair, Craig Hoy, said: “The announcement that Peter Murrell has been charged by Police Scotland is an extremely serious development in the investigation into the SNP’s finances.