Sturgeon says she was deceived, misled and betrayed' by ex-husband Murrell

Sturgeon said she was deceived, betrayed, and lied to by her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, who pleaded guilty to embezzling 400,310.65 from the SNP between 2010 and 2022. She described her week as likely the worst of her life and said she may need to speak with a therapist. She said she is coming to terms with being married to someone she did not know at all and acknowledged people would have questions. She denied any knowledge of Murrell’s crimes and said she was not charged after a police investigation. She said she learned details from newspapers only after the plea and emphasized that people assumed she knew how purchases were paid for.

"Nicola Sturgeon said she was deceived, betrayed and lied to by her estranged husband, Peter Murrell, as he embezzled hundreds of thousands of pounds from the SNP. The former first minister told an audience in Ireland at her first public appearance since Murrell pleaded guilty that she was coming to terms with being married to someone she did not know at all, and acknowledged people would have questions."

"Sturgeon, 55, said she was having probably the worst week of her life and she would probably need to sit with a therapist. This is a long-winded way of saying I am not OK, she said, but insisted, I will be OK, I am a strong, resilient person. Murrell has been remanded in custody after pleading guilty at the high court in Edinburgh on Monday to embezzling 400,310.65 from the SNP between 2010 and 2022."

"Sturgeon, who was at Listowel Writers' Week in County Kerry to promote her memoir, has consistently denied any knowledge of Murrell's crimes and was not charged after a police investigation. She said: I know there are questions, I understand that. I would probably be asking as well if I was looking in from the outside on somebody else. How can she not have known?"

"And I think underlying that question there is a big misassumption, which is that I knew anything about it, or that I knew all about it. I think everybody assumes that all of this stuff that it turns out my former husband was buying I knew about it, I just didn't question how he paid for it. As recently as Monday I was reading about things in the newspapers for the first time, things that I had never seen, I didn't know about."

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