Operation Branchform was a Police Scotland investigation into fundraising fraud in the Scottish National Party (SNP) that was launched in July 2021 and concluded in March 2025. The investigation initially concerned allegations that £666,953 raised by the SNP since 2017 specifically to campaign in a proposed second Scottish independence referendum was in part improperly spent on other activities. Operation Branchform uncovered extensive embezzlement perpetrated between 2010 and 2022 by Peter Murrell, former SNP chief executive and husband of former party leader and First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, for which he was imprisoned in 2026.
Described as "the highest-profile scandal of the Scottish devolution era", Operation Branchform lasted for nearly four years, covered the tenures of three First Ministers and two Chief Constables of Police Scotland, and ultimately cost almost £2.7 million. The investigation was widely believed to have precipitated the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and First Minister, and saw the highly publicised arrests of Murrell, Sturgeon, and SNP treasurer Colin Beattie in 2023. Media coverage of Operation Branchform and perceived delays in bringing the case to a conclusion led both the SNP's supporters and its opponents to claim that the investigation had been politicised. In March 2025, Police Scotland concluded their investigations into Sturgeon and Beattie, with no charges being filed against them. Murrell was charged with embezzlement that month, and admitted to embezzling funds worth £400,000 at the High Court on 25 May 2026. On 23 June 2026, Murrell was sentenced to five years and three months in prison.
The missing ring-fenced referendum fund that prompted the police investigation into the SNP's finances remains largely unaccounted for, with the SNP admitting in 2026 that it had been spent on routine party activities. SNP figures who raised initial concerns over the party's finances have called for further investigations into what they describe as a lack of transparency and effective governance within the party that enabled Murrell's thefts. The Scottish media and opposition politicians have questioned why the police and Crown Office chose not to bring prosecutions related to the disappearance of the ring-fenced fund. The SNP leadership has rejected calls for further inquiries into the actions of the party, police, and Crown Office in the case, insisting that the party was the victim of criminality and that Murrell acted alone.
Background Peter Murrell as SNP chief executive Peter Murrell was appointed chief executive officer of the Scottish National Party in 2001 by John Swinney. The party's success in the 2007 elections, where it became the largest party in the Scottish Parliament and formed a minority government led by Alex Salmond, was credited to organisation by Murrell. In 2010, Murrell married the party's then-Depute Leader, Nicola Sturgeon, with whom he had been in a relationship since 2003.
From 2010, Murrell abused his position to embezzle money from the SNP's funds. Murrell's thefts were relatively small until 2016, when the scale of his embezzlement accelerated. The majority of his thefts occurred between 2019 and 2022. His first major purchase, a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf, was made in early 2016 using £16,489 of SNP money. He also used £57,500 of party cash to buy a Jaguar I-Pace car in 2019, and sold it for £47,378.76 two years later. Murrell also spent £124,550 on a luxury Niesmann + Bischoff motorhome, paid for in 2020 entirely with party funds. Murrell created false documents to disguise the payment as a legitimate party expense. Murrell also used SNP funds for extensive purchases of luxury items, including two Bremont watches for a total of £9,350, a £4,225 Montblanc Starwalker World Time fountain pen, £500 of Le Creuset crockery, a £3,500 Hamilton & Inches silver wine coaster, and a £160 Folio Society edition of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism.
Early concerns surrounding SNP finances Fundraising by the SNP for a proposed second Scottish independence referendum began in 2017. The fundraising effort was closed down after the snap general election of that year. Labour Party MSP James Kelly asked the Electoral Commission to investigate whether the SNP had spent the money on campaigning in the general election. The SNP denied this, saying the money raised was ring-fenced for a future referendum campaign. A second fundraiser followed in April 2019. This fundraiser also claimed to be ring-fencing donations for a specific purpose, saying "Our plan is to distribute An Independent Scotland: Household Guide to every household – all 2,460,000 of them! To achieve that, I am asking you to join me in making a donation to this specific project".
In January 2020, the pro-independence blogger Stuart Campbell, through his website Wings Over Scotland, claimed that the SNP's published accounts for 2018 did not contain enough money to cover the ring-fenced sums that were said to have been raised. The SNP dismissed allegations that the money had been spent on party activities as "utter nonsense" and "categorically not true".
In October 2020, the Electoral Commission published the SNP's 2019 accounts. These did not list the referendum campaign funds separately and showed that the money the SNP had to hand, around £97,000, was again much less than the amount that was said to be ring-fenced. The SNP's then treasurer, Colin Beattie, emailed SNP donors regarding allegations that the referendum campaign fund had already been spent. Beattie insisted that there was £593,501 in the "Referendum Appeal Fund" that was ready to be deployed "instantaneously", and that the SNP did not separate restricted funds from the rest of the annual accounts. Beattie claimed that the donations were "woven through" the income figures for that year.
Resignation of SNP finance committee In the SNP internal elections of November 2020, Douglas Chapman was elected as SNP National Treasurer, replacing Colin Beattie. Chapman was seen as part of an "awkward squad" of activists and politicians, which included Joanna Cherry and Roger Mullin, who were elected in opposition to Nicola Sturgeon's leadership and approach to gaining a second independence referendum.
In early 2021, three members of the SNP's Finance and Audit Committee (FAC), Cllr Frank Ross, Cynthia Guthrie and Allison Graham, became concerned at what they described as "chaotic" and "incompetent" financial management. Speaking to LBC after Murrell's imprisonment in 2026, Graham and Guthrie described a toxic culture within the SNP which they said discouraged scrutiny, tolerated poor governance, and was excessively deferential towards the party leadership. Graham described seeing budgetary figures for 2020 that were incorrect by £1.51 million, and recalled a budget that the Finance and Audit Committee had not seen being passed regardless by the SNP National Executive Committee (NEC).
In March 2021, Ross, Guthrie, and Graham chose to resign from the FAC over lack of access to party accounts. They agreed a joint resignation statement that was read out at the NEC in March 2021, saying that "inadequate" information had left them unable to perform their duties, which was due to "obvious procrastination by the CEO": "This has extended to ignoring our requests and simply failing to provide basic information which members of FAC require to be able to carry out our work. We can only conclude that there is a clear intention to prevent the FAC from doing its work for whatever reason."
Graham claimed that the statement was met with invective and abuse from the rest of the committee. The statement was not included in minutes later produced by the NEC. Video footage of the meeting, leaked to the press in 2023, showed Nicola Sturgeon telling the committee to be "very careful" about suggesting that there were problems with the party's finances: "There are no reasons for people to be concerned about the party's finances, and all of us need to be careful about not suggesting that there is." Guthrie came to the conclusion that the ring-fenced referendum fund had been allowed to "seep into the accounts", and that attempts to conceal this further enabled Murrell's embezzlement. Guthrie joined the rival splinter Alba Party following its launch one week later, and was one of their lead candidates in the next month's Scottish election.
As a result of the resignation of the three FAC members, long-time Scottish independence campaigner Sean Clerkin made a complaint to Police Scotland about the allegedly missing funds at the end of March 2021. On 30 March 2021, former SNP MP George Kerevan and SNP Common Weal Group founder Craig Berry also resigned from the party, saying in a statement: "Elected representatives of the party rank and file have been denied their legitimate voice at online meetings of the National Executive, branch motions to National Conference have been summarily ignored, and mandated national gatherings cancelled without explanation. Significant questions remained to be asked regarding party finances and internal paid appointments because of the non-functioning of the party finance committee." Both Kerevan and Berry subsequently joined the Alba Party.
In May 2021, Douglas Chapman also resigned as SNP National Treasurer, saying he "had not received the support or financial information required to carry out the fiduciary duties of National Treasurer". Interviewed on the BBC's Sunday Show, then-Deputy First Minister John Swinney said he did not understand what had prompted Chapman's actions and said that he was unaware of a police complaint into the SNP's finances. Swinney insisted that between the National Executive Committee, external auditors, and the Electoral Commision, there was "a huge amount of scrutiny of party finances". Nicola Sturgeon, then party leader and wife to Peter Murrell, then the party's chief executive, took over as acting treasurer, with Electoral Commission rules requiring someone to be in the post at all times.
Joanna Cherry MP also resigned from the SNP's National Executive Committee later that month, saying on Twitter, "A number of factors have prevented me from fulfilling the mandate party members gave me to improve transparency & scrutiny & to uphold the party's constitution. I won’t be making any further comment at this stage".
Roger Mullin, who remained on the National Executive Committee, later accused Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon, and then-Business Convenor Kirsten Oswald, of seeking to shut down attempts to improve governance, accountability, and scrutiny within the party. Mullin accused Oswald, who chaired NEC meetings, of being "just a mouthpiece for Nicola Sturgeon and Peter Murrell", and recalled an incident where Murrell said that information on party wages was never provided to the committee.
A month after Chapman's resignation, Peter Murrell loaned more than £107,620 to the party. This loan was not declared to the Electoral Commission until August 2022, more than a year late.
Beattie was re-appointed as SNP Treasurer in June 2021. After a SNP NEC meeting that month, Beattie said £666,953 had been raised through referendum-related fundraisers from 2017 to 2020, and that £51,760 had been spent directly on campaigning for another referendum. He said funds were "earmarked" for that purpose, and "amounts equivalent to the sums raised" would be spent on "the intended purpose".
Police investigation Early investigation, 2021–2022