Police arrested the husband of former Scotland first minister Nicola Sturgeon during an investigation into the funding and finances of the governing Scottish National party.
The arrest on Wednesday of Peter Murrell, who resigned as chief executive of the SNP last month after the party admitted it had 30,000 fewer members than it had claimed, sent shockwaves through Scottish politics.
Until his resignation, Murrell was one half of what was seen as Scotland’s premier “power couple”. He had served as chief executive of the pro-independence SNP since 1999 and in 2010 married Sturgeon, who announced her resignation as party leader and first minister in February.
Police Scotland, the national force, said it had arrested a 58-year-old man and that he was in custody and being questioned by detectives “in connection with the ongoing investigation into the funding and finances” of the SNP. The force said in an update on Wednesday evening that the suspect had been released without charge “pending further investigation”.
A person familiar with the situation confirmed Murrell was the arrested man. Broadcasters showed footage of a large police tent and screens erected outside Sturgeon and Murrell’s home in Glasgow. Officers were also filmed entering the SNP headquarters in Edinburgh and leaving with large evidence bags.
Police have been investigating the SNP since 2021 after receiving complaints related to donations to the party. Donors claimed money given during independence referendum fundraising appeals in 2017 and 2019 were spent by the party on other things.
The SNP had suggested that more than £600,000 raised through the special appeals was “ringfenced” for a referendum campaign, but filings to the Electoral Commission, the independent watchdog, showed that at the end of 2019 the party had less than £100,000 in cash and cash equivalents.
The party has also faced questions about a £107,620 loan Murrell made to the party in 2021 “for working capital purposes”. The loan was not declared by the party to the Electoral Commission until more than a year later, a breach of election finance rules.
The arrest is likely to increase pressure on Humza Yousaf, who was elected SNP leader and Scotland’s new first minister last week, to reform the party. Yousaf became Sturgeon’s successor after a campaign that pitched him largely as a continuity candidate, but has said he wants to revamp its internal governance and widen decision-making.
“Of course the police investigation and the news this morning is challenging, is difficult, I’m not going to pretend otherwise,” Yousaf told the BBC. But he said it would not undermine Sturgeon’s legacy on issues such as child poverty and that he had begun seeking to understand SNP finances and improve governance and transparency.
Asked if the action against her husband could be the real reason Sturgeon resigned, Yousaf said he believed “absolutely” the former first minister’s explanation that she had decided she had taken the party as far as she could and was exhausted after the coronavirus pandemic.
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said the arrest was a “deeply concerning development”.
“For too long, a culture of secrecy and cover-up has been allowed to fester at the heart of the SNP,” Baillie said. “We need Humza Yousaf and Nicola Sturgeon to urgently state what they knew and when.”
