Operation Branchform
Operation Branchform was a Police Scotland investigation into fundraising fraud in the Scottish National Party that was launched in July 2021 and concluded in March 2025. The investigation concerned allegations that £666,953 raised by the SNP since 2017 specifically to campaign for independence in a proposed second Scottish independence referendum was in part improperly spent on other activities. Operation Branchform precipitated the resignation of Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader and First Minister of Scotland in 2023, and resulted in the prosecution of Sturgeon's husband and former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell for embezzlement in 2025.
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 saw the highly-publicised arrests of Peter Murrell, Nicola Sturgeon, and SNP treasurer Colin Beattie. 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 and appeared in court for the first time on 20 March 2025.
Background
SNP fundraising, 2017–2019
Fundraising for a proposed second Scottish independence referendum by the Scottish National Party began in 2017 and, after the snap general election of that year, the fundraising effort was closed down. Labour Party Member of the Scottish Parliament 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".
Early concerns surrounding SNP finances
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.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 2020 SNP internal elections, Douglas Chapman was elected as SNP National Treasurer, replacing Colin Beattie. On 20 March 2021, however, three members of the SNP's Finance and Audit Committee resigned over a lack of access to party accounts. As a result, long-time Scottish independence campaigner Sean Clerkin made a complaint to Police Scotland about the allegedly missing funds in March 2021.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". 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. MP Joanna Cherry then 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".
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 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
The police investigation was launched in July 2021 following seven complaints. These included allegations that ring-fenced referendum funds were instead spent on legal costs for Peter Murrell during the Alex Salmond sexual harassment scandal, and for SNP MEP Alyn Smith during a defamation case against the Brexit Party. Funds were also reported to have been spent on the refurbishment of the party's offices. Police Scotland was said to be "at loggerheads" with the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service over the decision to announce a formal investigation.In August 2021, Sturgeon told a Zoom meeting of the SNP's NEC that, "We don't need to talk about the finances. The finances are absolutely fine". The meeting - which was recorded and released publicly in April 2023 - was to discuss a report commissioned by depute leader Keith Brown on financial transparency, following the resignation of Douglas Chapman. Brown's report recommended a "monthly written summary of income and expenditure, confirmed via the bank account", to increase transparency. According to a party source, Sturgeon insisted that "there was nothing wrong with the accounts and that people should stop talking about it because it was undermining the party. It's fair to say she was pretty raging about it. She went on at some length telling everyone that everything was absolutely fine and that it shouldn't be discussed." The recommendations in Brown's report were not acted on.
In September 2021, The Times reported that Police Scotland had received a search warrant from the Crown Office to obtain documents from the SNP's auditors, the accounting firm Johnston Carmichael.
In 2022, a peer-review of the operation was conducted by the National Crime Agency, which the police described as normal "good practice".
In October 2022, the accountant firm Johnston Carmichael resigned from auditing the SNP's finances, after over a decade working with the party. The news of their departure was kept from the party's NEC and did not become public knowledge until April 2023. The SNP would be without auditors for over six months.
In December 2022, Wings Over Scotland reported that a loan of £107,620 made to the SNP in June 2021 had come from the party's then-CEO Peter Murrell, and that the Electoral Commission had not been informed until over a year later, in August 2022, breach of the commission's reporting rules. The stated reason for the loan was to assist with the party's cash-flow after the Scottish Parliament election in May 2021, although by April 2023 the majority of the loan had not been repaid, with £60,000 still outstanding.
2023
In February 2023, it was reported that the police planned to speak to key witnesses within the party. Former party treasurer Douglas Chapman, as well as several other former officials from the party's governing body, were subsequently reported to have been contacted by police in the days before Nicola Sturgeon announced her intention to resign as First Minister. In the same period, there were calls for Murrell to stand down because of the investigation into the loan he had made to the SNP.Nicola Sturgeon announced her intention to resign as First Minister and SNP leader on 13 February 2023. The announcement was described as a surprise by media outlets and prompted speculation that her decision was connected to the ongoing police investigation into the SNP's finances. Sturgeon has maintained that her decision to resign was provoked by occupational burnout.
Peter Murrell arrested
Peter Murrell resigned as SNP chief executive in March 2023 owing to a dispute over membership numbers during the SNP leadership election. On 5 April 2023, Murrell was arrested by Police Scotland in connection with Operation Branchform, with the police saying they were conducting searches at a number of addresses. The police searched Murrell and Sturgeon's private residence in Glasgow, including the garden, and also searched and removed documentation from the SNP's headquarters in Edinburgh. After questioning, Murrell was released without charge pending further investigation. A Niesmann + Bischoff motorhome, with a sales price of around £110,000, was subsequently seized from the home of Peter Murrell's mother in Fife as part of the investigation. Neighbours reported that the motorhome had never been moved. Beattie said he did not know about the purchase of the motorhome at the time.The police's tactics in their search of Sturgeon and Murrell's home, especially the erection of a forensic tent over the front door, were questioned by Scottish Nationalists. Noel Dolan, a former special adviser to Nicola Sturgeon, said: "I believe the police behaviour in the use of tents outside and invading the former First Minister's home has been very heavy handed. It was completely over the top." Dolan called for the issue of police powers to be raised in the Scottish Parliament. His comments were criticised by Calum Steele, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, as "based on theory rather than fact". Police Scotland declined to comment on an ongoing investigation. Others claimed that the investigation was a conspiracy: SNP MSP James Dornan accused the police and media of having "some kind of collusion about making sure the media are in attendance when the slightest thing happens", and described the search of the Sturgeon-Murrell home as "like Fred West's house". Police Scotland denied any suggestion that the media was informed of the search ahead of time. Mairianna Clyde, a former SNP candidate for the City of Edinburgh Council who was later reselected for the 2024 council by-election, wrote on Twitter: "We should be completely clear about the events of the last few days. The British establishment could not destroy the SNP at the polls. So they are destroying us through the media and a deliberately protracted overblown police and legal action."
Questions were also raised over the time taken to approve the warrant for the search of Sturgeon and Murrell's home: The Scottish Sun reported that the request for a warrant was first made on 20 March, but was not approved and sent to a sheriff for two weeks before it was executed on 5 April. It was suggested that this was to avoid being seen to influence the result of the 2023 Scottish National Party leadership election. This was denied by the Crown Office, which described such allegations as an "unacceptable slur" on the integrity of the Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain, and on the Crown Office's public prosecutors. Owing to the political nature of the allegations, the First Minister Humza Yousaf said that both the Lord Advocate and the Solicitor General Ruth Charteris - whose offices are political appointments in the Scottish Government - would recuse themselves from the investigation.
It was announced in early April, after Murrell's arrest, that accountants Johnston Carmichael had resigned from auditing the SNP's finances, after over a decade working with the party. It later emerged that they had done so "around October" 2022, according to Humza Yousaf, the new leader of the SNP, who also said he was unaware that the party was without auditors until he took office. The news of their departure was kept from the party's NEC. Over £1 million of Short Money, public funds payable to the SNP group in Parliament, was at risk if the SNP did not produce audited accounts for their Westminster Group by 31 May 2023. It was announced on 3 May 2023 that the SNP had appointed new auditors, the AMS Accountants Group in Manchester, over six months after the previous auditors had resigned. The SNP Westminster Group ultimately submitted their audited accounts before the 31 May 2023 deadline.
Legal costs from the investigation were reported to have contributed to the SNP having financial difficulties by April 2023.