Husband of former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon charged with embezzlement in finance probe

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon poses for the media with husband Peter Murrell, outside polling station in Glasgow, Scotland, on Dec. 12, 2019. The husband of former Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been re-arrested in a probe into the finances of Scotland’s pro-independence governing party. Police Scotland said a 59-year-old man had been taken into custody on Thursday, April 18, 2024 and was being questioned by detectives. While police did not name the suspect, the details provided matched up with Peter Murrell, the party’s ex-chief executive who was first arrested over a year ago. (AP Photo/Scott Heppell, File)

The husband of former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon has been charged with embezzlement in a probe into the finances of the pro-independence Scottish National Party, a shocking setback for the country’s most powerful political couple.

Police said a 59-year-old man had been charged after being arrested and taken into custody for questioning yesterday by “detectives investigating the funding and finances of the party”, which governs Scotland in a power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens.

He was released after being charged. While police did not name the man, the details provided matched up with Peter Murrell, the party’s former chief executive, who was arrested just over a year ago.

Police have been investigating how £600,000 (NZ$1.2 million) earmarked for a Scottish independence campaign was spent. Murrell, Sturgeon and Colin Beattie, the SNP’s former treasurer, were arrested and questioned last year but released without being charged.

Murrell’s first arrest came shortly after Sturgeon’s surprise announcement in February last year that she was resigning after eight years as party leader and First Minister of Scotland’s semi-autonomous government.

Murrell stepped down the next month amid controversy about the party’s declining membership and a bitter fight to replace Sturgeon. He held the position for more than 20 years.

At the time of Murrell’s first arrest, police searched the couple’s Glasgow home over two days.

It is highly unusual for a leader or former leader of a British political party to be arrested. Sturgeon said after being released from custody in June that her arrest had been “both a shock and deeply distressing”. She insisted she had done nothing wrong.

“I do wish to say this, and to do so in the strongest possible terms,” she said in a statement on social media at the time. “Innocence is not just a presumption I am entitled to in law. I know beyond doubt that I am in fact innocent of any wrongdoing.”

In announcing her resignation, Sturgeon said she knew “in my head and in my heart” that it was the right time for her, her party and her country to make way for someone else.

Sturgeon and Murrell have been married since 2010 and helped steer the SNP to a dominant position in Scottish politics. It heads the government in Edinburgh and holds a large majority of Scotland’s seats in the UK Parliament in London.

But Sturgeon resigned with her biggest political goal – taking Scotland out of the UK to become an independent country – unrealised.

She had led the party and led Scotland since 2014, when Scots rejected independence in a referendum. While the referendum was billed as a once-in-a-generation decision on independence, Sturgeon and her party have pushed for a new vote, arguing that the UK’s departure from the European Union had changed the ground rules.

Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell, pictured in 2019, have been married since 2010. He was the Scottish National Party's chief executive for more than 20 years. Photo / AP

Those efforts reached a stalemate when the UK government refused to authorise a new referendum.

Sturgeon’s departure unleashed a tussle for the future of the SNP amid recriminations over declining membership and divisions over the best path towards independence. Opinion polls suggest support for the party, now led by Humza Yousaf, has sagged.