Nicola Sturgeon said she feels like she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her estranged husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the party.
Murrell pleaded guilty this week to embezzling the sum from the SNP between 2010 and 2022.
The 61-year-old spent the money on items including a motorhome, cars, kitchen gadgets, expensive watches and pens, and more mundane purchases such as hand cream and toilet seats.
He is set to be sentenced in June, the same month that the SNP faces two by-election contests – one in Aberdeen South and another in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry.
The SNP has faced calls for an independent inquiry into its finances.
Sturgeon was Scotland’s first minister from 2014 to 2023 while Murrell served as the SNP chief executive from 2001 to 2023.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme, Sturgeon said she is “not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes”.
She said: “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.
“I will take responsibility for the things I do, the decisions I make.
I’m sitting here with you right now, answering questions because I believe strongly in that accountability.
“But I am not responsible for the crimes that my former husband committed and I’m not going to apologise for somebody else’s crimes.” Sturgeon previously said she had been “completely cleared and exonerated” by police and that she had been lied to by her former husband.
“(Murrell) perpetrated a crime on the SNP,” she told the BBC.
“By definition, that included me as the party leader.
He deceived.
“He is serving and will be serving a sentence for a crime he committed.
I’m out here feeling as if I’m serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit.” Nicola Sturgeon said that angry does not even begin to cover how she feels about her ex-husband, former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell.
In an interview on the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme she said: “Am I angry with him? I don’t even think that begins to cover it.
“Because not only has he lied to me and betrayed me – and if this was an entirely private thing, that would be bad enough – I mean, I’ve been genuinely touched this week by some of the messages I’ve had by women who’ve been betrayed by their husbands, lied to by their husbands, not in identical circumstances, although some in, you know, not dissimilar circumstances, and speaking to me about the, just the depth of hurt they feel, and I feel all of that.
“But it’s more than that.
He has put me into a position of real peril, he has subjected me to public vilification, having the finger of suspicion pointed at me – you know, humiliation.” Ms Sturgeon added: “Am I angry at him? Yes, I’m angry, but I’m also carrying a degree of hurt and I think a degree of trauma about – this whole episode....
