A majority of Scots doubt Nicola Sturgeon's insistence that she had no knowledge of Peter Murrell's crimes, according to a new poll. The survey by Norstat found that 59 per cent of people do not believe the former first minister's claims that she had no knowledge or suspicion of her estranged husband's criminality, while 23 per cent do believe her.
The poll, commissioned by the Sunday Times, also found that 40 per cent of independence supporters doubt her, while 38 per cent do not.
Murrell's Conviction and Spending
Murrell was jailed for five years after he pled guilty in May at the High Court in Edinburgh to one count of embezzlement. The former long-serving SNP chief executive was found to have taken hundreds of thousands of pounds from his employers over more than 10 years.
The long-running Operation Branchform investigation uncovered that the cash was spent on a string of luxury household items as well as a number of vehicles. The best-known of Murrell's purchases was the Niesmann and Bischoff motorhome in October 2020, bought in Dunfermline and later parked outside Murrell's mother's home in the Fife town.
The Record first reported how the campervan was supposedly earmarked for the SNP Holyrood election campaign in 2021 but was never deployed after Covid restrictions were lifted. However, the prosecution cast doubt on that explanation and said there was no evidence the vehicle was ever intended for political purposes.
Sturgeon's Response
Sturgeon later claimed she never "consciously" saw the campervan as it was parked "round the side" of her mother-in-law's house. The ex-SNP leader also said her estranged husband was "lying to me right up until he pled guilty".
Speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe event in August, the ex-SNP leader said she was not informed that Murrell had been negotiating a guilty plea with the Crown Office from March this year, and said she only found out about his intention the week before he appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh to enter his plea.
Sturgeon said: "Over the years, he never really levelled with me. The day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he had done for the first time. I suddenly realised I had been living with somebody that I never really knew properly."
"That's something for me to come to terms with, and I don't think I'm there yet, but also for my family to come to terms with. It's a really difficult process." Sturgeon, who lives in London, continued: "There's some days I don't think about it that much, and there are some days I can't think of anything else. And I think it's going to be like that for quite some time."
Political Fallout
John Swinney last month insisted he is "still friends" with Sturgeon despite her pointed criticism of the SNP's election campaign. The First Minister said he last spoke to his predecessor "over the summer" after she accused him of running a campaign that lacked "vision" and "big picture thinking".
