Nicola Sturgeon may claim she was too busy running the country to know that bizarre purchases at the centre of a criminal investigation were made with SNP funds, party insiders believe.
Senior nationalist sources expect the former First Minister, who was arrested in June, to insist she did not know that a string of assets, including a luxury motorhome seized from her mother-in-law’s driveway, were paid for by the party she led.
Associates of Ms Sturgeon, who has strongly denied wrongdoing, admitted that her claims may test the credulity of the public given many of the items detectives are examining were apparently seized from her own home.
However, they insisted that senior SNP figures believed her denials, claiming that “sometimes the explanation that is hard to believe is actually the one that is true”.
As First Minister Ms Sturgeon would not have had time to keep on top of household finances, they suggested.
Meanwhile, other former colleagues believe that Ms Sturgeon’s recent claim that she rarely visited her mother-in-law was “significant”.
A luxury SNP-owned campervan was seized from the driveway of Ms Sturgeon’s mother-in-law’s home in Dunfermline, with her comments seen as an attempt at “floating a possible explanation”.
Original complaint
The police investigation began when independence supporters complained that £600,000 of donations solicited for independence campaigns that never happened had gone “missing” from party accounts.
However, Iain Livingstone, the former chief constable, has suggested that detectives had “moved beyond” initial complaints and were now looking at fraud, potential embezzlement and misuse of funds.
“Sometimes the explanation that is hard to believe is actually the one that is true,” a senior SNP source said. “To a normal person it might stretch credulity, but the First Minister does not lead a normal life.
“The police investigation started with the complaint about donations, but that was really just what allowed them to look under the bonnet.”
Police raided the home Ms Sturgeon shares with her husband, the former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell, in April. Mr Murrell was arrested and, like Ms Sturgeon, has been released without charge pending further inquiries.
A motorhome, said to have been worth £110,000, was seized from the driveway of Mr Murrell’s elderly mother and has been impounded.
Humza Yousaf, who succeeded Ms Sturgeon, has confirmed that the vehicle was owned by the SNP. Other purchases said to be being looked at by police include designer pots and pans, pens and a fridge freezer.
The SNP headquarters in Edinburgh was also searched. A police warrant was believed to be more than 100 pages long and also included a woman’s razor and a wheelbarrow.
Ms Sturgeon has strongly denied wrongdoing, but has consistently declined to comment on whether or not she believes her husband has done anything wrong. Mr Murrell has not publicly commented on the investigation.
Edinburgh Fringe
Quizzed this month at an Edinburgh Fringe show by the broadcaster Iain Dale about whether she was confident her husband was innocent, Ms Sturgeon insisted nothing should be read into her refusal to say.
She said: “I am not going to speak for anybody other than myself. In not answering that question, that’s not to say yes or no. I’m not going to try and speak for anyone else, whether it’s my husband or anybody else.”
She also refused to say when she became aware of the campervan outside her mother-in-law’s house, an upmarket Niesmann + Bischoff model, which neighbours said never left the driveway.
She said the question went to “the heart” of the police investigation and was therefore unwilling to answer.
Asked when she last visited her mother-in-law, she revealed she had rarely made the trip to see her in Fife.
“My mother-in-law has just been admitted to a care home,” Ms Sturgeon told Mr Dale on Aug 10. “I haven’t visited my mother-in-law as often perhaps as I should have done over the last few years because of Covid, my work, her work. So maybe that’s something that doesn’t reflect particularly well on me.”
Her response to the question has been viewed by some former colleagues as significant.
“The former chief constable has already said the investigation is looking into potential embezzlement,” another source said. “Nicola’s only conceivable defence is to say that she knew nothing about it. There had to be a reason for her agreeing to do a very public interview with Iain Dale at such a sensitive time.
“Her response to the question about the campervan – that she never visited her mother in law – was very strange. Nicola is not famous for her smalltalk, but even she couldn’t credibly claim that she didn’t notice a huge brand new campervan on her elderly mother-in-law’s drive or think to ask anything about it.
“So to say she was never there struck me as her floating a possible explanation.”
The SNP and representatives of Ms Sturgeon were approached for comment.
