Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s former first minister, has called for Peter Murrell to get a “hefty” jail sentence after he admitted stealing £400,000 from the Scottish National party.
Yousaf had been serving as first minister for just eight days when Murrell was arrested in April 2023 at the home he then shared with Nicola Sturgeon, Yousaf’s ally and mentor, in a police fraud investigation.
Yousaf blames that crisis for immediately undermining his shortlived period in office, which ended in chaos after he unilaterally cancelled the SNP’s power-sharing deal with the Scottish Greens a year later.
“First of all, let me say frankly how pissed off I am at Peter Murrell,” Yousaf told the Stooshie politics podcast for the Dundee-based Courier newspaper.
“I hope he ends up with quite a hefty sentence, quite frankly, because he deserves it.”
Murrell had by then been chief executive of the SNP for 22 years, and with his marriage to Sturgeon, was one of the most powerful people in British politics.
Murrell’s arrest, which saw the front of his home shrouded in police tents, was quickly followed by Sturgeon’s arrest too as a suspect and of the then-SNP treasurer, Colin Beattie. Both were subsequently cleared by police.
The scandal “cast a massive shadow” over Yousaf’s term in office, he told the Courier. “It was difficult to get out of. All that hangs over you.” Murrell “hideously betrayed” the trust of his allies and colleagues, he said.
Yousaf, who was the first Asian and first Muslim to serve as first minister, said he was “flabbergasted” when detectives subsequently seized a £124,000 motorhome from the drive way of Murrell’s mother in Dunfermline.
But it was Murrell’s prolific spending on luxury but also prosaic items such as the Lalique Feuilles salt and pepper grinders, which cost £2,618, that Yousaf said particularly shocked him.
“The motorhome people focus on, I understand that. It was the things like £2,000 on a salt and pepper shaker. I didn’t even know people made salt and peppers shakers that cost that sort of money.”
Yousaf’s remarks contrast with the far more cautious stance being taken by John Swinney, the current first minister, who has refused to comment directly on Murrell’s fate until the court proceedings end.
Although Murrell pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,310 on Monday, Swinney argues that the case is still live because he has not yet been sentenced. Murrell is due to appear in court again on 2 June where the prosecution is expected to provide greater detail about his crimes, and is due to be sentenced on 23 June.
