𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Nicola Sturgeon could lose her marital home to repay the £400,000 her ex-husband embezzled from the SNP, it has been claimed. The former Scottish first minister and estranged husband, Peter Murrell, bought a suburban home in Uddingston, just outside Glasgow, for £228,000 in 2005.

However, according to a legal expert, this property is the “most obvious asset” likely to be sold off under proceeds of crime legislation. Given Ms Sturgeon and Murrell’s high salaries and lack of outgoings, it is expected that they would have been comfortably able to pay off any mortgage. Similar properties in the same street have recently sold for about £330,000. While Ms Sturgeon would be entitled to her share of any sale, after a police investigation into her was dropped without charges, Murrell’s stake in the home would be used to reimburse the party he ran for over two decades.

The remaining £60,000 of a £107,620 loan provided by Murrell to the party in June 2021 is also expected to be cancelled and included in the total amount he may be required to repay. At the time, the party stated that the loan was intended to address short-term cash-flow pressures.

It later emerged that the loan had not been declared to the Electoral Commission when it should have been. The loan was made approximately six months after Murrell had taken delivery of a luxury motorhome worth £124,550, which had been purchased using party funds and kept at his mother’s property.

During court proceedings on Monday (May 25), Murrell admitted embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP over a 12-year period. Prosecutors also made an oral application for a confiscation order under the Proceeds of Crime Act, legislation that enables authorities to recover assets linked to criminal conduct. Having been remanded in custody at Saughton jail in Edinburgh, Murrell is likely to receive a lengthy jail term when he is sentenced next month.

Prosecutors had earlier secured a court order preventing the property from being sold. The house was searched by police in April 2023, shortly after Ms Sturgeon stepped down as First Minister. Murrell received legal aid for his defence against the embezzlement allegation, a form of public funding generally available to individuals who are unable to meet their own legal costs.

However, following his conviction, authorities may seek to recover assets he owns that are not held as cash. According to Yvonne Evans, a senior law lecturer at Dundee University, selling the property would be “the most obvious way to make up shortfall on Murrell’s part”.

This comes as it was revealed that Murrell used SNP money to buy his nephew a scooter for Christmas. In 2013, Ms Sturgeon took to social media on Christmas Eve to joke about the state of his gift wrapping.

“Our nephew will NEVER guess what it is,” she wrote.

However, court records show Murrell used party cash to buy two Vtriker children’s scooters for £65.99 and £65.98 just days before as part of his £400,000 spending spree. The present is thought to have been for the son of Mr Murrell’s sister, who would have been seven at the time.

The full list of purchases was published this week after he pleaded guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh and included children’s gifts, jewellery, two cars and a motor home. He also spent almost £15,000 on luxury items around Ms Sturgeon’s birthdays, including Montblanc pens, crystal vases and a Fortnum & Mason hamper.