Shoe-gate! How Sturgeon donated £290 stilettos to SNP fundraiser...then watched as Murrell bought them for £4,000

By HANNAH RODGER, SCOTTISH CHIEF REPORTER Published: 19:15, 13 June 2026 | Updated: 19:16, 13 June 2026 Nicola Sturgeon donated a signed £290 pair of her shoes for auction at an SNP fundraising event – then looked on as her fraudster husband ‘bought’ them for an eye-watering £4,000, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. To the amazement of a packed venue, shamed former SNP chief executive Peter Murrell submitted the successful offer for his wife’s high heels – showcased in a bespoke display box – as bidding stalled at £1,500. And just months after Murrell ‘returned’ the Kurt Geiger green snakeskin shoes to his then First Minister wife, she wore them at Downing Street on a visit to Prime Minister Theresa May. Last night questions were raised over whether Murrell, who has admitted to embezzling more than £400,000 from the SNP, used stolen money to buy the shoes. Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay said: ‘There was no need for Peter Murrell to buy his wife’s shoes to launder the money he was pilfering from the SNP bank account, because he had total control over it. ‘His decision to splurge thousands of pounds on Nicola Sturgeon’s sparkly stilettos must just have been a very brash and public act of showing off. ‘It begs the question, did Sturgeon ever think to question her husband’s extravagant spending or wonder how he could possibly afford it? ‘This bizarre episode just confirms that Murrell thought he was bombproof, because he had the backing of Sturgeon and John Swinney, who ignored all the warnings about the SNP accounts and told those with concerns to shut up.’ Nicola Sturgeon's shoes going up for sale at an SNP auction in 2015 Ms Sturgeon wearing the flamboyant footwear to a meeting with Theresa May in October 2016 The shoes were worn by the former First Minister at the SNP conference in October 2015 and were put up for auction during a glittering gala at the former Thistle Hotel in Glasgow in November that year. Signed and displayed in a bespoke case alongside images of Ms Sturgeon proudly wearing them, the shoes drew attention from some of the 500 guests at the St Andrew’s Day event. But sources said bidding had stalled at around £1,500 before Murrell stepped in. Just a month earlier, Murrell had used cash that he pilfered from SNP coffers to buy luxury shoe valet cases from online retailers. On October 21 of that year, he paid £424.99 for a wooden La Cordonnerie Anglaise valet box from A Fine Pair of Shoes Ltd, which comes with luxury shoe polishes and brushes. Two days later he bought another similar box for £165 from retailer Herring Shoes Ltd. Murrell last month admitted to embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP over 12 years. He will be sentenced on June 23. One attendee at the event on November 20, 2015, said: ‘Everyone in the room was absolutely astounded that he was prepared to pay that colour of money for his wife’s shoes. ‘Looking back, it makes you wonder where the money was coming from. But Nicola didn’t seem worried or concerned.’ Ms Sturgeon and her estranged husband Peter Murrell during happier times  Meanwhile, a senior SNP source confirmed that Murrell had a ‘habit’ of buying items at party auctions that he or Ms Sturgeon had donated. They said: ‘I saw Peter bidding very enthusiastically for a collection of fine wines once, but they were bottles that he had donated himself. ‘Thinking about it now, that’s really quite strange. Why donate the item if you wanted to keep it? ‘Unless he was trying to show off and look as though he was the big saviour of the party with all of the cash.’ Murrell also flaunted his money elsewhere, including at a jewellers in Shetland in 2019, while on a visit with the First Minister. While Ms Sturgeon was browsing the workshop at Shetland Jewellery, Murrell is said to have walked up to shop owner Kenneth Rae and declared that he was ‘the man with the money’ and wanted to buy something. Mr Rae said he remembered the then First Minister’s visit, on July 28, 2019, and another visit from two police officers years later while they investigated Murrell’s crimes. In 2021, Murrell, 61, offered to bail out the SNP by giving the party a loan of £100,000 at a time when it experienced ‘cash flow problems’. The loan wasn’t registered until 18 months later, in breach of Electoral Commission rules. The SNP was in the process of repaying the sum when Operation Branchform – the investigation into Murrell’s £400,000 crime spree, which had been going on since 2010 – began. Last week, the SNP, shored up by the Scottish Greens, blocked attempts by Scottish parliamentarians to set up an inquiry into the party’s financial mismanagement and the Murrell scandal. Now MPs on Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee will consider requests to launch their own probe. The SNP was contacted for comment. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 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