John Swinney has said it is for the courts to decide whether Nicola Sturgeon should be forced to give back gifts bought for her by Peter Murrell using embezzled SNP cash.
The First Minister also said he had no knowledge of Murrell and his family reportedly selling their Portuguese villa before the former SNP chief executive claimed legal aid during his embezzlement case.
“Swinney says courts must decide if Sturgeon returns gifts bought with embezzled SNP cash.”
Speaking in Glasgow, Swinney was asked whether Sturgeon, Scotland’s former first minister, should return any items bought for her with such funds. He told the Press Association: “There’s a process under way involving the Crown, which has made representations to the court about a confiscation order, which will relate to all of these different issues.”
“So, I think it’s best if I leave that to the court to decide on these particular issues, because they will be material to the judgment that’s got to be arrived at in response to the claim made by the Crown,” Swinney added.
Sturgeon has acknowledged that some of the gifts she received from her former husband were bought using cash embezzled from party members. At the end of last month, she spoke of the “pain” and “bewilderment” she felt after discovering that some of the gifts Murrell gave her had been purchased with money he embezzled, including a £425 necklace he bought for her from a shop in Shetland that she was often pictured wearing. “I loved that necklace and I wore it a lot,” the former SNP leader said in a teary interview.
Murrell, who embezzled more than £400,000, admitted to using SNP money to pay for a 9ct gold pendant in Shetland in 2019. He is set to face legal action to recover the more than £400,000 he embezzled from his party – which he ran as chief executive from 2001 to 2023. He used his access to the SNP’s accounting system to make an array of purchases, including chopsticks, a luxury campervan and several high-end coffee machines among a litany of other items over the course of years.
It was reported at the weekend that Murrell and his family sold their jointly-owned villa in Portugal after receiving legal aid. Swinney said he had “no knowledge” of the sale but that legal aid claims were “assessed on the basis of very strict criteria”. He said the Scottish Legal Aid Board has said it was satisfied “that the correct judgments have been pursued”.
The SNP has also faced questions over whether it could owe HMRC money if Murrell claimed back VAT on purchases he had claimed were for party use. Swinney said last week his party was in talks with the taxman on the matter.
Opposition parties are also calling for a Holyrood inquiry into the SNP – something not supported by the party.