Peter Murrell: Sturgeon's husband charged over SNP 'embezzlement' claims

Peter Murrell, husband of former Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon, has been charged "in connection with the embezzlement of funds" from the SNP, the police have confirmed.

The party's former chief executive was arrested on Thursday morning and charged in the evening after questioning. He has since been released.

Murrell was first arrested in April last year, as part of a far-ranging investigation into the SNP's funding and finances. Detectives searched the couple's home and "confiscated a luxury motorhome parked in the driveway of Murrell's 92-year-old mother's home", said The Guardian. Murrell, Sturgeon and the party's then-treasurer Colin Beattie were arrested and interviewed. All three were released without charge, and Sturgeon has strenuously denied any wrongdoing.

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The inquiry "focused on the status of £667,000 in donations for a pro-independence fighting fund", specifically on "allegations it had been used for the SNP's day-to-day spending".

An SNP spokesperson said the re-arrest and charge came as a "shock", while Scottish Labour's deputy leader Jackie Baillie called it "another incredibly concerning development in this long-running investigation".

Police Scotland has been "criticised for the duration of the inquiry" into the SNP's funding and finances, said The Times. First Minister Humza Yousaf said earlier this month he would welcome an end to the investigation. 

For more than two decades, Murrell "played a vital role in the SNP", turning the party into the "dominant force in Scottish politics", said The Scotsman. Given his centrality to the party, the police inquiry "is likely to have a far-reaching effect on UK politics and possibly the next general election", said The Guardian after his arrest last year.

A YouGov poll published this month showed Labour ahead of the SNP in Scotland for the first time since the 2014 independence referendum in a "sign of the governing party's decline", said The Scotsman.