The list of luxury items bought by Peter Murrell using the £400,310 he stole from the Scottish National party runs to about 100 pages, and reads like a Harrods mail order catalogue.
As well as luxury cars and watches there are items at the other end of the scale: curry sauce, glue and a corkscrew.
Stuart Houston, the assistant chief constable in charge of Police Scotland’s 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”.
Here are some of the details.
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1. Cars
Murrell bought a luxury SUV – a Jaguar iPace – for £81,000, subsided with £57,500 stolen from the SNP money, which he later sold for £47,378, pocketing the proceeds. There was also a £124,550 Niesmann+Bischoff motorhome, which he parked on his mother’s driveway, and for which he created fake invoices.
He used a further £16,489 of SNP money to part-fund the purchase of a £32,989 Volkswagen Golf.
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2. Luxury items
Murrell also spent on high-end pens and watches: £9,350 on two Bremont watches, £4,225 on a Starwalker World Time fountain pen, £1,407 on two Montblanc Boheme Noir fountain pens and £700 on a boldly striped Great Characters The Beatles Special Edition Fountain Pen in 14-karat gold.
In November 2020, the indictment notes that he spent £650.75 at Fortnum & Mason, buying two of its Feasting Advent calendars for £400 and a Musical Santa’s Sleigh Advent calendar at £165. Earlier in 2020, £2,618.16 went on two Lalique Feuilles pepper & salt grinders. There was a silver wine coaster, too, for £3,500 – and a £2,495 jewellery box.
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3. Games and technology
He appears to have unwound with gaming and tech, buying iPads and Kindles, and a PlayStation 3 console for £247, four Nintendo 3DS handheld consoles and copies of PS4 games including £63.49 on Fifa 14 and £42.99 on Grand Theft Auto.
As well as other games – including two iterations of the Fifa franchise, Battlefield 4, The Sims 3 Pets and Pac-Man – he bought an Xbox One console for £297.14 and a Nintendo Switch.
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4. Home items
Murrell had a penchant for posh coffee. He spent £442.20 on coffee mugs from Le Creuset, £1,299 on a Miele CM6300 Coffee machine and a further £3,232 on a Jura Giga 5 Cromo coffee machine. But he bought instant coffee too: 2kg of Nescafé Gold Blend for £81.16 in 2018.
On 8 March 2024, he spent £49.80 on a Le Creuset wine pourer, a Le Creuset champagne and sparkling wine bottle opener and a three-in-one corkscrew.
The garden at the house in Uddingston, Glasgow, he shared with Nicola Sturgeon was lavished with a Husqvarna robotic lawnmower, costing £3,070, including installation.
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5. Culture
Scandi-noir crime thrillers, which Sturgeon often cited among her preferred pleasures, also featured. He paid £60 for the DVD for the Killing: Seasons 1 to 3, using money stolen from the SNP, and £75 on Borgen: The Complete Seasons One and Two DVD. He also bought a box set of Sherlock Holmes.
He bought books using the SNP’s money as well, including the Folio Society’s edition of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism, for which he paid £160.
