FORMER SNP chief executive Peter Murrell was jailed for five years and three months today after he admitted to embezzling more than £400,000 of party funds.

He used party cash over a 12-year period for personal purchases, including a luxury motorhome, Montblanc pens, luxury watches, a Jaguar SUV and £2,600 salt and pepper grinders.

Lord Young told the estranged husband of the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon he was guilty of a “calculated crime of dishonesty” involving “a significant breach of trust” to the SNP and its donors.

The judge at the High Court in Edinburgh handed down the sentence saying he wanted to send a warning to others that these crimes carried significant punishment.

Murrell’s sentence was backdated to his guilty plea made on May 25 this year.

Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie welcomed the jailing, saying “it is right that [he] be punished for his crimes” but warned that “there are still serious questions which remain unanswered about this appalling scandal.”

She said these included “why Murrell was able to get away with stealing vast sums of money for over a decade and why no-one within the SNP had any curiosity about the state of the party’s finances.”

In fact, three members of the SNP’s finance and audit committee resigned in 2021 over being denied access to party accounts; later in the year the party’s treasurer Douglas Chapman quit that role and MP Joanna Cherry resigned from its executive, also over an alleged lack of financial transparency.

Ms Baillie also slammed First Minister John Swinney and his party for having “shamelessly tried to sweep this under the carpet by stubbornly refusing to accept that a parliamentary inquiry could help get to the bottom of these issues.”

Following Murrell’s guilty plea, Mr Swinney had denied that a lack of checks or accountability within the SNP was to blame for the embezzlement, arguing that the former SNP chief executive had gone to great lengths to avoid getting caught.

But Lord Young described Murrell’s crimes as “not particularly sophisticated.”

A previous hearing was told that he was able to approve his own expenses.

Mr Swinney said the saga had been “agony” and added: “I was not a serving office bearer in the Scottish National Party from 2004 to 2024, so I had no operational right to look at these things.”

Defence lawyer John Scullion KC told the court that Murrell took full responsibility for his crimes, adding that he knew time in prison was “entirely deserved” and felt “guilt and remorse” as well as being “overwhelmed by feelings of embarrassment and shame.”