Peter Murrell controlled a Scottish independence campaign group that is under police investigation for an alleged £1.5m discrepancy in its finances, an insider has claimed.
Murrell, the disgraced former chief executive of the SNP, who was jailed for stealing more than £400,000 from the party, was alleged to have had oversight of high-value donations given to Yes Scotland, with one former staffer claiming that “his foot was on the pipe”.
The SNP has insisted that it acted independently of Yes Scotland, the company that led the group campaigning to take Scotland out of the Union in 2014, but the group’s former marketing director has cast doubt on that claim.
Yes Scotland recorded £1.5m in its accounts at the end of 2014, but recent filings showed it had a balance of zero. It has said that its income was fully accounted for and that it was “defamatory to say otherwise”.
Police are investigating after a former SNP activist lodged a complaint about the apparent discrepancy contained in the accounts.
There are now fresh claims that Murrell, who was jailed in June for five years for embezzling from the SNP, had control over the group’s finances.
Ian Dommett, Yes’s marketing director until January 2014, claimed that Murrell “tightly controlled” the group, including its high-value donations from lottery winners Colin and Christine Weir.
The SNP was said to have held back £2m earmarked for Yes – half of which came from the Weirs. Yes Scotland has denied that donations were held back or controlled by the party.
Mr Dommett, who joined Yes in 2012 and now lives in England, told the Sunday Mail: “Nothing happened in Yes Scotland without either the direct instruction or agreement of the SNP. It was unbelievably tightly controlled; the hand was around the neck of Yes Scotland from the beginning.”
Recalling his pleas to Murrell about the arrangement, Mr Dommett said: “We were on a hiding to nothing. You could just tell his foot was on the pipe.”
Police outside the SNP offices on the day that Murrell was arrested in 2023 – Robert Perry/Getty
Angus MacNeil, a former SNP MP, said: “The SNP had huge influence, definitely bordering on control, over Yes Scotland. On the day-to-day, Peter Murrell would have been very involved. They were hand in glove.”
The claims build on previous signs pointing to Murrell’s involvement in the group.
Ross Greer, co-leader of the Scottish Greens, posted a tweet in 2023 in which he thanked Murrell for giving him a pay rise during his time as a staffer for Yes. He deleted the tweet after Murrell admitted having embezzled funds from the SNP.
Rachael Hamilton, the deputy leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, said: “For years, the SNP insisted Yes Scotland was a separate organisation, but this account suggests something very different.
“John Swinney and Nicola Sturgeon were both very senior figures in the SNP throughout this period. They owe the public answers, not more stonewalling, and they should finally back a full independent inquiry.”
Murrell arrives in a police van for sentencing at Edinburgh High Court in June – Jane Barlow/PA
Yes Scotland was a company set up and launched by Alex Salmond in May 2012 to campaign for independence. The group was officially independent from the SNP, but Nicola Sturgeon, Murrell’s wife (now estranged), served on its board, and Shirley-Anne Somerville, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and Housing, worked there as director of communities.
It has not been active since 2014, when Scots voted against independence.
Questions over the group’s accounts were first raised by David Henry, a former SNP branch secretary, who was part of the same group whose concerns brought down Murrell.
His complaint focused on a strange note in the company’s 2014 accounts that mentioned £1,524,998 as “other income”.
The figure was not mentioned again in the company’s subsequent filings, and seemed to vanish altogether when accounts for 2016 showed that Yes had a balance of zero.
Yes Scotland was set up in 2012 by Alex Salmond and was officially independent from the SNP – Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
Since 2016, the company has filed “dormant accounts” – a type of submission made by companies that have no deposits, withdrawals or transfers but still exist.
Yes Scotland Ltd’s latest filings were published in August 2025, and showed there had been nothing in the bank since October 2024.
A Yes Scotland spokesman told the Sunday Mail: “All of the income received by Yes Scotland is fully accounted for and it is grossly defamatory to say otherwise. There now appears to be a desperate attempt to link Mr Murrell’s criminal conduct in the SNP to that of Yes Scotland.
“To make it perfectly clear, Mr Murrell never at any time had access to Yes Scotland’s accounts. No donations to Yes Scotland were held separately, nor were the donations or accounts ever controlled by the SNP. For the sake of transparency, it is important to note that the Weirs donated £3.5m directly to Yes, starting in August 2012, and certainly not via the SNP.”
The SNP said: “Yes Scotland Ltd is and was an entirely separate entity to the SNP. Throughout the referendum campaign, Yes Scotland was run by an independent board of directors. As everyone knows, the SNP was a major partner in Yes Scotland and campaigned with Yes Scotland during the referendum.”
Yes Scotland was approached for comment.