Scandal in Scotland: the luxury motorhome that makes nationalists reel

The shock is immense in Scotland. “Un camping-car à 124 000 livres sterling, une Jaguar à 57 000, une machine à café à 3 200, un télescope, un hélicoptère miniature… Et même un jeu vidéo Grand Theft Auto At 43 pounds and a Jamie Oliver wooden spoon at less than 15 pounds, s’étrangle The Scotsman, Edinburgh daily,

These would be some of the purchases made by Peter Murrell, then chief executive of the Scottish National Party (SNP), using money from the Scottish nationalist party. The ex-husband of Nicola Sturgeon, former Scottish Prime Minister, pleaded guilty on Monday May 25 to having embezzled more than 400,000 pounds sterling (461,000 euros) from the coffers of the independence movement which he had administered for more than twenty years.

Behind the almost burlesque list of purchases lies a major political crisis. It all starts in 2021 with Operation Branchform, an investigation by the Scottish police into some 667,000 pounds sterling (770,000 euros) in donations paid to the SNP to prepare for a possible second referendum on independence, after the failure of the 2014 election. Activists suspect that this sum would have been used for something else. Over the months, investigators searched the party headquarters and the home of the Murrell-Sturgeon couple. Seized from Murrel’s mother