How detectives unravelled Peter Murrell's 12-year SNP embezzlement

Peter Murrell has admitted spending over £400,000 of SNP funds on personal luxury goods. BBC News reveals the painstaking investigation behind his conviction.

The tent, the motorhome, and the paper trail that brought down an SNP chief

When police pitched a large blue and white tent on the front garden of Peter Murrell and Nicola Sturgeon's home near Glasgow in April 2023, it became the defining image of Scotland's most politically charged criminal investigation in years. BBC News reports on how that moment was the visible tip of a vast forensic undertaking that ultimately led to Murrell's conviction for embezzlement.

Critics at the time were swift. A former SNP head of communications called the operation "a grotesque spectacle", while another senior party figure dismissed it as "heavy handed" and "completely over the top". Police Scotland maintained their actions had been "proportionate and necessary".

The tent was erected so that officers could examine, log and seize possessions inside the property without every move being photographed by waiting media. They believed those possessions had been bought with money stolen from the SNP.

A source with inside knowledge of the inquiry told BBC Scotland News that the evidence had become "overwhelming".

"This was SNP money, SNP accounts, SNP credit cards, used privately for the benefit of an individual," the source said. "That's why the tent was there, because it was so incredibly excessive. There were multiple items. It's scandalous."

The same source said the investigation had begun after police received an allegation of fraud. "It took a very long time to get the material that we needed to find out what was going on. It was only through painstaking, dogged work by detectives and forensic accountants that the embezzlement was revealed. The people who were the most critical were the ones who should have been the most angry. It was their money that was getting taken."

Two years on, Murrell has admitted that the home he shared with Scotland's former first minister was indeed a crime scene — one of more than 20 locations connected to his offending.

More than £400,000 over 12 years

Between 2010 and 2022, Murrell spent more than £400,000 of SNP funds for personal benefit, covering his tracks with false receipts and falsified accounting entries. The scale and duration of the fraud — conducted across more than a decade while he served as the party's chief executive — makes a substantial prison sentence likely, even accounting for his guilty plea.

Assistant Chief Constable Stuart Houston, who led the investigation, said Murrell had "abused his privileged position with access to Scottish National Party funds to divert cash into his own accounts and bankroll the lavish lifestyle he craved but could not afford."

"From 2010 to 2022 he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury goods while carefully trying to hide his criminality with false receipts and accounting," Houston added. "He must now face the consequences of his actions."

Operation Branchform

The inquiry, given the randomly assigned name Operation Branchform, was launched in the summer of 2021 after members of the public raised questions about the whereabouts of £670,000 donated to campaign for a second Scottish independence referendum.

Based at the Scottish Crime Campus at Gartcosh, detectives established that Murrell had used cash donated by SNP supporters to buy goods worth £139,971 from more than 90 retailers, entirely for his "own personal use or the personal use of others".

On the day of his arrest, 5 April 2023, officers seized a £124,550 luxury motorhome parked outside his mother's house in Dunfermline. The vehicle — a Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e — had been purchased with party funds, its true origin concealed through false entries in the SNP's accounts. Murrell applied the same method to a Jaguar I-Pace, which he later sold and kept the proceeds from.

Co-ordinated with the search of the couple's home, officers also raided the SNP's headquarters off the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, emerging with crates of potential evidence — a sight described by observers as arguably more striking than the tent outside the Glasgow house.

The investigation was the most politically sensitive carried out in Scotland since police examined sexual abuse allegations against the late Alex Salmond, who was cleared at trial in 2020. That outcome was not lost on investigators as they began scrutinising the party's finances.

A task made harder by deliberate concealment

Major financial investigations of this kind take considerable time. Detectives had to seek and obtain large volumes of records from financial institutions, retailers and the SNP itself, cross-checking purchases against the party's accounts line by line.

Insiders say the task was made significantly harder by the care Murrell had taken to conceal his activity from the SNP's auditors, officials and elected representatives.

As criticism of the inquiry mounted publicly, then chief constable Sir Iain Livingstone addressed the Scottish Police Authority directly. "Decisions are and will be based on public safety and the rule of law — not politics or any constitutional position," he said. "Wholly inaccurate assertions and uninformed speculation will only serve to damage justice, infringe the rights of individuals and undermine the rule of law."

Scotland's prosecution service, the Crown Office, advised police throughout the investigation and reviewed the final report on the case in full before deciding whether to charge the man who had run Scotland's governing party for 22 years.

The Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain KC, head of the Crown Office, had previously served in the Scottish cabinet alongside SNP ministers including Sturgeon, and recused herself from all decision-making in the case for that reason.

Former Crown Office chief executive Catherine Dyer noted: "Our whole system in Scotland is predicated on fairness. The Lord Advocate is completely independent, as are all the prosecutors."

The investigation that began with questions from the public about missing referendum funds ended with an admission from one of Scottish politics' most powerful behind-the-scenes figures that he had spent years stealing from the party he served.

Source: BBC News