The former first minister, who now lives in London, has repeatedly denied any knowledge of her estranged husband’s crimes.
Nicola Sturgeon was SNP leader and Peter Murrell was SNP chief executive at the time of the online fundraisers in 2017 and 2019
Most Scots doubt Nicola Sturgeon’s insistence she had no knowledge of Peter Murrell’s crimes, a poll has found.
A survey by Norstat found a majority of people – 59 per cent – do not believe the former first minister’s claims she had no knowledge or suspicion of her estranged husband’s criminality.
Less than a quarter of the country – 23 per cent – do believe her.
The poll, commissioned by the Sunday Times, also found that 40 per cent of independence supporters doubt her, while 38 per cent do not.
Murrell was jailed for five years after he pled guilty in May at the High Court in Edinburgh to one count of embezzlement.
The former long-serving chief executive was found to have fleeced his employers out of hundreds of thousands of pounds for more than 10 years.
The long-running Operation Branchform investigation uncovered the cash was spent on a string of luxury household items as well as a string of vehicles.
The best-known of Murrell’s many purchases was the Niesmann and Bischoff motorhome in October 2020. It was bought in Dunfermline and later sat outside Murrell’s mother’s home in the Fife town.
The Record first reported how the campervan was supposedly earmarked for the SNP Holyrood election campaign in 2021 but was never deployed after Covid restrictions were lifted.
But the prosecution cast doubt on that explanation and said there was no evidence the vehicle was ever intended for political purposes.
Sturgeon later claimed she never “consciously” saw the campervan as it was parked “round the side” of her mother-in-law’s house.
The ex-SNP leader also said her estranged husband was “lying to me right up until he pled guilty”.
Speaking at an Edinburgh Fringe event in August, the ex-SNP leader said she was not informed Murrell had been negotiating a guilty plea with the Crown Office from March this year.
And said she only found about his intention the week before be appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh to enter his plea.
Sturgeon said: “Over the years, he never really levelled with me. The day he pled guilty, I was still learning about some of the detail of what he had done for the first time. I suddenly realised I had been living with somebody that I never really knew properly.
“That’s something for me to come to terms with, and I don’t think I’m there yet, but also for my family to come to terms with. It’s a really difficult process.”
Sturgeon, who lives in London, continued: “There’s some days I don’t think about it that much, and there are some days I can’t think of anything else. And I think it’s going to be like that for quite some time.”
John Swinney last month insisted he’s “still friends” with Sturgeon despite her pointed criticism of the SNP’s election campaign.
The First Minister said he last spoke to his predecessor “over the summer” after she accused him of running a campaign that lacked “vision” and “big picture thinking”.
