New images reveal luxury items bought with SNP funds in Murrell case

Dozens of new images released by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service show the luxury goods Peter Murrell bought with Scottish National Party funds, including watches, a £4,000 fountain pen and a £220 teapot. The pictures add a visual record to a case that has become a test of political oversight, after Murrell, the former SNP chief executive and estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon, was convicted of embezzling party money at the High Court in Edinburgh on 25 May 2026.

Murrell pleaded guilty in court to embezzling £400,310.65 over a 12-year period, with the charge elsewhere set out as £459,046.49 from the SNP. The offending covered spending between 2010 and 2022 and was investigated under Operation Branchform, the police inquiry into the party’s finances. The case has already led to arrests and questioning of other senior SNP figures, including former party treasurer Colin Beattie, as investigators examined how money set aside for a political organisation could be diverted into private luxury spending.

Among the most striking items is the motorhome that police seized from Murrell’s mother’s house in April 2023. The vehicle, a Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e worth £124,550, had reportedly travelled only four miles by the time officers took it away. That detail has become one of the most vivid symbols of the case: an expensive purchase, bought with party funds, that appears to have been used very little before being recovered by police.

The court narrative and related reporting say the spending also covered home improvements and vehicles, but the latest images focus attention on the personal purchases that investigators say were funded illegally. Police Scotland said after the conviction that it was grateful to the people who came forward with concerns about Murrell’s conduct, underscoring the role of internal alarms and public scrutiny in bringing the case to court.

The Scottish Government has repeatedly said it would not comment on live criminal proceedings. The conviction and the visual evidence now circulating through the case leave the SNP facing a deeper institutional reckoning: not just over one man’s conduct, but over the controls that failed to stop more than £400,000 in party money being used for private gain over more than a decade.