Nicola Sturgeon: I feel as if I’m serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit

Key points

• Nicola Sturgeon has said feels like she is “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit” after her former husband and former Scottish party 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 to fund a lavish personal lifestyle.
• The 61-year-old spent the money on items including a luxury motor home, a Jaguar SUV and a VW Golf, boutique cosmetics, iPads and a Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper set worth £2,618. He will be sentenced in June, the same month that the SNP faces two UK parliamentary byelections – 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 party’s chief executive...