Police report about Nicola Sturgeon’s husband to be sent to prosecutors ‘within weeks’

Detectives investigating the SNP’s finances will submit a report about Nicola Sturgeon’s husband to prosecutors “in a matter of weeks”, Police Scotland’s chief constable has said.

Jo Farrell said that officers working on Operation Branchform will shortly submit to the Crown Office a standard prosecution report detailing their findings and laying out their evidence.

She said it would be “in relation to the man that’s been charged”, referring to Peter Murrell, Ms Sturgeon’s husband and the former chief executive of the SNP.

Last month he was charged in connection with the embezzlement of funds from the SNP.

Ms Farrell refused to comment on whether anyone else would be charged, but said the investigation is “not finished” and remains a live inquiry.

Her intervention on Operation Branchform was her first since she took up the post of Police Scotland chief constable last October. She was previously head of Durham Constabulary.

Referendum donations

Since July 2021, Police Scotland’s Operation Branchform has been examining the SNP’s handling of more than £600,000 in donations raised in 2017 for a second independence referendum.

Supporters made complaints when accounts lodged with Companies House in 2020 appeared to show the SNP only had £97,000 in the bank despite the referendum never having been held.

On April 5 last year, police raided Ms Sturgeon and Mr Murrell’s home and searched it for two days, erecting a large evidence tent. A luxury motorhome was also confiscated from outside the Fife home of Mr Murrell’s elderly mother.

He was also arrested in the raid, which took place the week after Humza Yousaf became First Minister. The following month, Colin Beattie, the SNP’s former treasurer, was arrested, then Ms Sturgeon was held in June.

All three were released without charge pending further investigation and Ms Sturgeon has vigorously denied any wrongdoing.

‘Complex investigation’

Mr Murrell, who married Ms Sturgeon in 2010, was arrested a second time last month and charged. Police Scotland said she and Mr Beattie remained “under investigation”.

Ms Farrell told Sky News: “It’s a live investigation, complex investigation, and the matter is being progressed and we expect the report to go to the Crown Office in a matter of weeks.” Lawyers at the Crown Office will then decide whether the case should go to court.

Pressed about the political sensitivities of the investigation in a general election year, the chief constable said: “We’ve investigated allegations, that’s moving on. We have very skilled, professional, objective individuals working on that case.”

She told LBC the report being submitted would be about Mr Murrell and rejected claims from nationalists that the allegations were part of a UK “conspiracy” aimed at damaging the SNP and undermining the cause of independence.

Ms Farrell said policing was “independent of politics” and she had “every confidence that the teams that are investigating those allegations will do so objectively”.

She added: “There’s no conspiracy.”