EXPOSE: Why Nicola Sturgeon can’t avoid responsibility for the Peter Murrell fraud, digging into the accounts

Nicola Sturgeon has been playing the victim of misogyny card in response to the media storm over Peter Murrell, her estranged husband’s admission of committing a long running fraud, in his role as the Chief Executive Officer of the Scottish National party, stealing some £459,000 from the SNP over 13 years. With respect she’s ‘avin’ a giraffe. You need to put on an accountants hat to see how the maths does not add up and Sturgeon is herself culpable. That I do below.

I have put to one side the arguments that because Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell were married and living together in the same home throughout the period of the fraud and that as his spouse, she should have noticed the extensive and long running fraud when purchases appeared at their home like a £72,000 Jaguar being parked on the drive or the £125,000 motor home parked at her mother in laws. Or the two top of the range hair driers bought by a bald man.

Instead, I look at two notable issues in the SNP accounts for the years ended 31 December 2020 and 2021.

Independence referendum

The first concerns the independence referendum funding and subsequent fallout when it became apparent that the referendum monies had not been ringfenced but spent on other activities and in reality, some of the fraudulent activities like the purchase of the motor home.

The 2020 accounts discuss the topic of funding and expenditure on the independence referendum, always the number one priority for the SNP.  The accounts state that a cumulative £666,953 had been received and £51,760 had been spent in the years to 31 December 2020.  This should have left a balance of £615,193 which was stated as being “earmarked” for the campaign. The balance sheet showed cash of just £260,565 so clearly the majority of the “earmarked” cash had been spent on other party activities.

The balance sheet contains the following statement:

                 “The financial statements were approved by the Party Officers on 25 June 2021”

Note the plural of party officers.  The three named party officers on page 2 of the accounts were Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell and Colin Beattie.

In the following year accounts to 31 December 2021 on page 12 under the heading of referendum appeal the cumulative receipts were noted that £740,822 had been received and £253,335 had been spent.  This should have left a balance of £487,487 “earmarked” for the campaign.  The balance sheet showed cash of just £144,975, so clearly the majority of the “earmarked” cash had also been spent on other party activities. This led to a lot of fallout as set out later in this note.

The balance sheet contains the same statement as in the prior year:

                 “The financial statements were approved by the Party Officers on 30 June 2022”

Note again the plural of party officers.  The three named party officers on page 2 of the accounts were again Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell and Colin Beattie.

Clearly the narrative description of funds being “earmarked” provided by Colin Beattie is inaccurate in both years and the campaign monies hadn’t been ringfenced but spent.  The size of the funding shortfall is highly material in the accounts to even a casual reader let alone a leader whose key party goal is to achieve independence.  Nicola Sturgeon, Peter Murrell and Colin Beattie are all clearly culpable in allowing such monies to spent on other activities and then trying to downplay the issue in the accounts.

The £125,000 Campervan

According to a Scottish Sun article of 13 February 2026, the Campervan was purchased by two payments. The first was £12,500 payment by a SNP credit card in the name of Peter Murrell (most likely a deposit).  This was followed by a second payment of £112,050 from a SNP bank account on 7 December 2020.  The two payments totalled £124.550.

Despite spending £124,550 on a Campervan, there is no separate fixed asset category for the Campervan such as Motor Vehicles in fixed asset note in the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020.  The two disclosed categories of tangible fixed assets were furniture, fixtures and fittings and office and computer equipment.

In the year ended 31 December 2021, a motor vehicles line is included on the face of the balance sheet with a net book value of £80,632 is disclosed along with a Nil comparative.  The line cross refers to Note 18 but in that note the two disclosed categories of tangible fixed assets are once again only furniture, fixtures and fittings and office and computer equipment.  There is also no stated depreciation policy for the motor vehicles. 

This has the appearance of the original purchase being hidden within either the furniture, fixtures and fittings or the office and computer equipment captions when the motorhome was purchased in the 2020 accounts and being given a bit more prominence in the subsequent year’s accounts.   The decision to not restate the comparative balance sheet or the fixed asset note in the accounts for the misclassification and the omission of a depreciation policy for motor vehicles all highlight a desire to try and minimalise the issue.

The Campervan purchase was clearly a material sum spent on Colin Beattie’s watch (total expenditure in the year was £3.3 million) as Treasurer and either he didn’t investigate why such a purchase had been made or acquiesced under pressure from Peter Murrell to not pursue the issue.  It also indicates weak controls if a single person can spend such a large sum without another person approving over a £100,000 expenditure or a lack of scrutiny by the second approving individual. 

The independence referendum fallout

Concerns about the SNP ringfencing of the independent referendum monies were being spent eventually led to the police investigation which then discovered the Murrell embezzlement.   According to Wikipedia, Colin Beattie was the SNP National Treasurer from 2004 to 2020.  He lost an SNP internal election in 2020 due to concerns over the referendum monies and was replaced as the SNP National Treasurer by Douglas Chapman. 

Douglas Chapman was appointed in November 2020 but resigned in May 2021 stating:

“Despite having a resounding mandate from members to introduce more transparency into the party’s finances, I have not received the support or financial information to carry out the fiduciary duties of National Treasurer.

Regretfully I have resigned with immediate effect”

His resignation was reported by the BBC.

SNP finance boss Douglas Chapman quits over 'lack of information' - BBC News

He resigned before the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020 were approved.

The link PressReader.com - Digital Newspaper & Magazine Subscriptions summarises some other key events:

·        JULY 2017 Inde­pend­ence sup­port­ers raise more than £600,000 for SNP to spend on second Indy cam­paign.

·        OCTOBER 2020 Accounts for 2019 show £482,000 in cash and reserves.

·        MARCH 2021 Nic­ola Stur­geon says the party has “never been in a stronger fin­an­cial pos­i­tion”. Three mem­bers of fin­ance and audit com­mit­tee quit.

·        APRIL 2021 Sunday Mail reveal a probe has been launched by police into the IndyRef2 appeal fund. MAY 2021 MP Douglas Chap­man quits as SNP treas­urer. Stur­geon assumes post in interim.

·        JUNE 2021 MSP Colin Beat­tie returns as treas­urer and tells NEC £51,570 of £666,953 raised is spent. Mur­rell loans SNP £107,620. Beat­tie and Chap­man sug­gest fun­drais­ing man­ager be appoin­ted but Stur­geon rejects the idea.

Conclusions

Its clearly poor governance to have only 3 Party Officials when 2 of them are married to each other and one is the Party Leader and First Minister of the Country and the other is the Chief Executive of the Party.  This issue clearly lies at Nicola Sturgeon’s door.  As a Party Official Nicola Sturgeon bears responsibility for the accounts, as she was one of the approving officials.  She also should bear her share of responsibility for the lax financial control environment at the SNP.

The abrupt resignation of Douglas Chapman after only months in role, just prior to the approval of the accounts to 31 December 2020 along with his comments about the lack of access to records and transparency is a massive red flag that there were serious issues in SNP finances initially concerned with utilisation of independent referendum monies for other activities.  I suspect that Peter Murrell didn’t want someone new looking to closely at SNP payments because they might have discovered his fraudulent activity.  The previous resignation of 3 individuals from SNP's Finance and Audit Committee on 20 March 2021 was another massive red flag. 

Nicola Sturgeon could and should have launched a proper investigation by an independent third party at that time and delayed the publication of the accounts for the year ended 31 December 2020 until the issues around the referendum monies were rectified.   I suspect she didn’t want the independence reference funds issue to be fully investigated as that may have been problematic for her leadership.

Instead, she reappointed the previous treasurer who was complicit in the failure to ring fence the referendum monies and had also failed to detect Peter Murell’s extensive fraudulent activities for over a decade.  She also signed off on Colin Beattie’s misleading comments in the accounts about the independent referendum funds trying to assuage wider membership concerns and also played down concerns over referendum monies.

So even if as she claimed on Panorama she was unaware of Peter Murrell’s embezzlement (much to most peoples incredulity) she is still culpable for the misspending of the independence referendum funds and attempting to avoid scrutiny on that issue along with Peter Murrell and Colin Beat­tie. 

The Jimmy Krankie lookalike is no victim here, however much she blubbers to sycophantic BBC interviewers.