Murrell jailed five years for £400k fraud

PETER Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP who embezzled more than £400,000 from the party, has been jailed for more than five years.

- 

Lord Young sentenced Murrell, the estranged husband of former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, to a backdated sentence of five years and three months at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday. Ms Sturgeon has said through her lawyer that she is “innocent of any crime”, while hitting out at “anonymous sources” which have tried to “insinuate guilt” on her part.

Lord Young told Murrell, 61, he had committed a “calculated crime of dishonesty” with a “large number of fraudulent acts over a 12-year period while you were chief executive officer of the SNP”.

He said the offending increased in frequency and amount over time. He added: “You found yourself unable to stop this offending, and it was only the detection of the crime that brought it to an end.”