Nicola Sturgeon has said she feels as if she is serving a sentence for a crime she did not commit, as she denied ever “consciously” seeing the motor home bought by her estranged husband with money embezzled from the Scottish National Party.
In her first media interview since Peter Murrell pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP, the former first minister said the luxury camper was parked “round the side” of her mother-in-law’s house and had been recorded in the party’s accounts as “motor vehicles”, so its purchase had not rung alarm bells.
Sturgeon, 55, has consistently denied knowledge of Murrell’s crimes, which spanned more than a decade between 2010 and 2022, and was not charged after a police investigation. However, she has faced a sceptical Scottish public after it emerged Murrell spent the money on items including a motor home, a Jaguar SUV, a VW Golf, boutique cosmetics, iPads and a pair of Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper grinders worth £2,618.
Speaking to BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sturgeon said she had visited her mother-in-law’s home “less than a handful of times” over the two-year period the motor home was parked on the driveway, and denied she had walked past it. She added that in the SNP’s accounts, which she examined as a member of the party’s ruling national executive committee, the motor home was recorded as “motor vehicles”, which did not appear out of place because the party routinely had branded buses on the road.
Sturgeon said she was not going to apologise for someone else’s crimes, adding: “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.” She acknowledged an error of judgment in keeping Murrell on as SNP chief executive when she became party leader in 2014, but insisted that does not make her responsible for his crimes.
