Up to courts to decide if Sturgeon has to give back Murrell gifts, Swinney says

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 Scottish 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.

Sturgeon has acknowledged that some of the gifts she received from her former husband were bought using cash embezzled from party members.

Murrell, who embezzled more than £400,000, admitted to using SNP money to pay for a 9ct gold pendant in Shetland in 2019.

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.”

Murrell 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.

The first minister 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.

At the end of last month, Sturgeon 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.

“And this is the other thing, the idea that I would have gone about wearing things that I had known were anything other than what they were presented as, a gift from my husband.

“And to then find out that these were gifts given to me that he’d bought with the party’s money causes a level of, I don’t know, pain, bewilderment.

“I don’t know, I’m not sure. I’m going to try. I am just not sure I will ever properly come to terms with that.”

The former first minister said she felt like she was “serving a sentence for a crime I did not commit”.

She has been accused by figures including former SNP MP and NEC member Joanna Cherry of shutting down concerns over the party’s finances.

A spokesperson for the Scottish Legal Aid Board (SLAB) said: “Unlike civil legal aid, SLAB don’t have any specific powers in criminal legal aid to recover (clawback) any assets which may be released to Peter Murrell at the end of the case to offset the legal aid costs.

“However, we are considering if there are other legal measures that might be used to safeguard the legal aid fund in this event.

“We would work with the Scottish Government and the legal profession if it was decided that the current powers in criminal legal aid to recover assets which may be released at the end of a case to offset legal aid costs should be reviewed as part of the reform process.”