“The tax default and reporting rules are an integral part of maintaining a fair league competition”.
Neil Doncaster, SPFL chief executive, November 2014.
“A fair league competition”. Strong words. I wonder if Mr Doncaster is keen to apply his ethics as evenly when it comes to a team with more than a couple of thousand fans. Don’t bet on it.
I suggested last week you ignore the comments coming out of Hampden about there being little appetite to look into the enormous levels of cheating which we now know went on is our game for over a decade. There is very little appetite from those occupying executive positions at Hampden, but they will not decide what happens.
Ultimate authority at the SFA and SPFL lies with the clubs, and more than just Celtic are alarmed by what went on, and the apparent flippancy show towards it in recent days by those paid to protect the honesty and reputation of our game.
Instincts exist within any organisation to protect itself. We’ve seen this play out in the Church (against their own), the police (against their own), Fifa (against their own), so it should be no surprise that those who worked, and became friends with, some of the architects of Rangers EBT scandal had little appetite to open an investigation.
An SFA or SPFL commission could lead to the disciplining of two-term SFA president, Campbell Ogilvies, or Sir David Murray, men who have made friends in the game for decades.
It would inevitably lead to the examination of the Resolution 12 issue (how Rangers were granted a licence to compete in the Champions League in 2011 when they didn’t meet the criteria). And this one is current enough to involve many still active in their roles.
And then there is the weighty matter of dealing with the consequences of what went on in our sport for all those years.
The demand of an investigation into what went on sounds reasonable but you cannot look into something corrupt without consequences, and that’s where corrupt systems work against fair competition.
Rangers rigged the system, their practises are as clear-cut a case of Financial Doping as you will find. They were playing by different rules, different tax rules and different player registration rules.
They failed to disclose information which should have been disclosed, but could have incriminated them. Unlike Craig Whyte, who was banned from the game for his duplicities, the directors who embarked on this great subversion have never been called to account.
Nor will they unless voices are heard across Scottish football. Don’t lose focus on getting angry (not yet, anyway), right now, we need fans of other clubs to share our concerns and let their voices be heard. Winning allies is the first part of winning this debate, and that’s easier done by calmly making our point.
11 clubs suffered financial consequences of Rangers Financial Doping. Motherwell lost a minimum of £2.1m from not gaining access to European competition. How would they feel if they were a cyclist half a mile behind Lance Armstrong in every race? Would if be OK, as he didn’t get caught?
There’s a Christmas toy collection for Maryhill Foodbank at Wild Cabaret, THIS Saturday, 14 November, from midday to 4:30. Families who don’t have money for food don’t have money for Christmas toys. If you have something you can donate, drop it in. There’s mulled wine and mince pies on the go.
You’ll find Wild Cabaret at 18 Candleriggs (0141 552 6165).
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67th heaven, how did you get on at the Torrance Hotel on Saturday?
Ivehadto..,
Yes & this is why people dont come out as they are wary of the Nutjobs
Darren O’Dea, gaun yersel . Well said
Another from johnjames, I’m still unsure what foot he kicks with…
The Reservoir Dogs of Rangers
by sitonfence
Witnesses in the Rangers Tax Tribunal hearing were assigned a colour cipher. The testimony of Mr Black was particularly revealing. By way of introduction, the Law Lords were provided with the following precis of his career at Rangers:
“While Mr Black had been involved in ‘signing and selling’ 350-400 players in 20 years of involvement at Rangers, he had not, and could not, because of all his commitments, devote any real time to detailed contractual negotiations. At the start of each football season he would meet with his manager to decide on which players might be possible recruits.
Only one individual matches this description. Sir David Murray.
Mr Murray did not consider the Employment Benefit Trusts as a means of tax avoidance, but rather as a means of retaining and rewarding loyal employees. According to Mr Murray the EBT enabled the club to attract players who would not otherwise have been obtainable. During cross examination, Mr Murray denied that the scheme was for tax avoidance. He described the policy as ‘a method of us acquiring, especially football wise, better players in a more cost effective manner than we would be able to do so’; that the club had been ‘very ambitious at that time’; and ‘it was seen as a correct and proper way for us to proceed’; that Rangers ‘have been very successful, because we’ve been able to attract players of a certain standard that, perhaps, we may not have been able to otherwise’.”
This correct and proper way has been ruled as illegal by the highest court in Scotland. Not only did Mr Murray introduce an illegal method of tax evasion, he charged Rangers £500,000 per annum for his EBT insights and helped himself to £6.3m.
The Law Lords characterized the testimony of the colour-coded former Rangers executives as “obstructive, unhelpful and evasive.” The Law Lords came to the conclusion that the former Rangers executives engaged in an enterprise to systematically evade tax on an industrial scale.
It follows that as it has been established as illegal in law, it contravened the SFA articles of association. Rangers, by Mr Murray’s admission, engaged in this strategy to gain a sporting advantage. These findings not only rebut the privately commissioned conclusions of Lord Nimmo Smith, but as they are legally binding, they render the LNS report as irrelevant and unsound.
I wonder what colour was assigned to Campbell Ogilvie. Mr Murray’s fellow ‘reservoir dog.’ Red, as an abbreviation for red-handed, would be apposite. Whilst a director of Rangers, Mr Red was the treasurer of the SFA. Should we be thankful that Mr Red did not encourage executives of the SFA to engage in tax evading EBT? If we are we should be far from thankful with the information he withheld and redacted to reduce the LNS report to a travesty.
The problem for Rangers is that since Mr Doncaster has publicly stated that we are the same club, sanctions could be applied to the team under Mr Warburton’s command. A significant points penalty could be imposed. The silverware is in the cross-hairs of four clubs represented on the SPFL board.
Mr Black will soon be giving evidence in the trial of Mr Green and Mr White.
The reservoir dogs that engaged in a heist at Rangers were Messrs Black, Red, Green and White.
If BDO appeal, they would be going against their largest creditor, it disny make sense.
Tho nothing makes sense with thems
Night night hoops
There will be trouble ahead !
*we’re going to need a bigger asterisk………………..
:0
HH.
isn’t it about time other players and managers came out an backed Darren O’D? Clyde1 and Shortbread are an absolute joke to the broadcasting community. Utterly pathetic and bordering on fascism! Looking forward to the channel 4 broadcasting of the effin facts from Alex Thomo Thomson!
If BDO lost an appeal then BDO are liable for the expenses. For this reason alone BDO will not appeal.
actually on second thoughts! i must learn!! never interrupt your enemy when they are digging their own grave……..again!
http://blogs.channel4.com/alex-thomsons-view/rangers-cheated-football-fraudulent-silverware/10066
Fives from Govan….
I just couldn’t resist that headline…
Guthrie Govan, casually demonstrating why he is probably the best guitarist that nobody has heard of.
Fives is the name of the piece he plays..
http://wp.me/p6DYht-nU
No One Walks Alone
For all the ill-gotten titles, the record books should be updated to declare the runner up as the rightful winner AND and asterisk with subnote: Result amended due to non declaration of player payments and tax evasion by RFCil.
I’ll vote natknow
I think Mark Daly/BBC (London) stopped at those they could stand up (about 70?). That leaves the rest to come out. We don’t know if Walt Cardi is a recipient. He may be on the hidden list.
Souness received one very late which was essentially a brown envelope for signing RFC players. Might have been better with an envelope.
Would other people not direct employees of 1873 be on that list. I sure hope so…
HH
Spoilers – if we can’t win no one will – is maybe an attitude to consider
What if sevco and SFA conspire to leave titles intact thereby letting thousands of genuine supporters walk away from a corrupt game leaving only like minded people
I think Smith had an EBT account but claimed there was no money in it
QUONNO on 9TH NOVEMBER 2015 8:41 PM
You have a lot more understanding of the subject than me. I will bow to your superior knowledge.
Great post on Celtic Minded by Pablo Escobar ………
There needs to be a coming together of the heads of supporters associations of all clubs who are in agreement that trophies won be declared null and void. And/or the heads of member clubs.
No one seems to realise how poisonous Rangers and David Murray and by all accounts indeed too Campbell Ogilvie have actually been. I think it’s fair to assume that given the lengths they went to to cheat and try and cover their tracks too, that cheating by them has gone on by them for a far longer time than is being reported. Leave the biased referees out of the equation as that’s always been and is going to be.
No one seems to realise the damage they have done. The entire game has suffered in numerous different ways. Their cheating and obscene spending or over spending led to other clubs being forced to spend out with their means in an attempt to try and keep up. Aside from the fact that no one had a chance trying to compete with that level of cheating while all other clubs spending way more than they normally could for players they couldn’t really afford. Some clubs have almost went to the wall because of this.
Higher cost players and wages in turn leading to higher ticketing prices. Fans eventually being priced out and unable to afford it. Fans staying away in their droves because because of the prices of watching a team that by and large was almost never ever likely to win anything. Clubs in their desperation trying to keep up by going out and spending on foreign players to the detriment of home grown talent. It’s now nearly 20 fucking years since a Scottish national side competed in a major tournament.
They have caused more damage than anyone realises because the ripple effects have been slow but devastating and have inadvertently had lots of other effects on the clubs and the game.
They’ve ripped Scottish football to fucking pieces for their own perverse and psychopathic superiority complex watp syndrome. Fucking rancid warped bastard fucks!
Players of other clubs have been cheated, fans have been cheated, clubs have been cheated!
They have systematically and very blatantly had previous employees put into positions of power at the SFA to deliberately facilitate the deliberate cheating whilst everyone else has had to play by the rules and run their own clubs accordingly.
Fucking cancerous bastards!
But there was certainly a much bigger list that Daly couldn’t run with because of legal problems. I don’t know if that changes as a result of the Law Lords decision
I prefer cups and titles not awarded with the record showing EXPUNGED! For future generations the question will then ALWAYS be asked WHY?. A SHAME STAIN that would never be forgotten…
HH
Sipsini
you still kicking about mate?
If so, can you forward both emails to Winning Captains if you’ve got his email
if not, can you send them on to me again, as twat here has deleted them
HH
Language Timothy…………!
Moravcik –
If ever there was a case for using asterisks…. ;-)
An old interview with boomsong and Keith Jackshun….
Rangers in crisis: Former Ibrox star Jean-Alain Boumsong lifts lid on EBT scheme
02:11, 18 JUN 2012 UPDATED 23:35, 3 JUL 2012
BY KEITH JACKSON
HE had never heard of an EBT until the day he signed for RFC. But now those six little letters will live with Jean-Alain Boumsong for the rest of his days.
7
SHARES
HE had never heard of an EBT until the day he signed for RFC. But now those six little letters will live with Jean-Alain Boumsong for the rest of his days.
The Frenchman has watched on from afar with utter astonishment as Rangers have unravelled over the past six months and last week’s liquidation of the old company has hit him so hard he feels somehow compelled to return to Scotland to do what he can to assist in efforts to save Ibrox from oblivion.
He may have only spent six months in Glasgow – and that was some eight years ago now.
But even so he insists in that short time he felt a bond with the club the likes of which he has never experienced before or after.
Which is perhaps why, even now, he still feels uncomfortable at the very mention of the tax avoidance scheme from which it is claimed he benefited to the tune of around £630,000.
Something about that offshore payment plan just never sat easily with Boumsong. So much so, in fact, that for the first time he has revealed he gave serious thought to pulling the plug on his free transfer to the club on the day he arrived in Glasgow to sign his name on the dotted line.
Eventually he was persuaded by accountants there was nothing illegal about the structure of the contract which would make him a wealthy man and a Rangers player.
But Boumsong smelled a rat back then. And it’s rankled with him ever since.
In an interview with Record Sport here at Euro 2012 he said: “My salary was normally paid but there was a trust. I was not comfortable with that to be honest. I didn’t know anything about it until the day I was going to sign.
“When I discovered it I first refused to sign the contract and said, ‘What is this?’
“I didn’t want to sign because it seemed strange, we don’t have that kind of payment in France and I didn’t know anything about it. When I left Rangers, for example, to sign for Newcastle, it was for a normal contract with normal payment.
“But the day I was signing for Rangers I was told it was legal.
“As players we don’t know the law but my advisers said, ‘It’s okay, you can sign it. It’s legal’.
“I wouldn’t have signed otherwise, no way. If I thought it was wrong legally I wouldn’t have gone. It’s important to be able to sleep at night without any fear of being chased by the tax office.”
If only those running Rangers had been just as scrupulous or even shared some of Boumsong’s reservations, then the club may have been spared from at least a proportion of its ongoing crisis.
EBTs may not have been the cause of their undoing – that one rests with Sir David Murray’s decision to hand the keys to Craig Whyte – but they did leave a huge tax liability hanging over Ibrox and those potential losses led to Lloyds Bank leaning heavily on Murray to sell up in the first place.
The finer details of how Rangers got into such a mess are all a little lost on Boumsong who was off to Newcastle in an £8m move after only six months into that lucrative five-year deal.
He has since spent time at Juventus and Lyon and is currently looking for an escape from stricken Greek outfit Panathinaikos who are experiencing a financial meltdown of their own.
There is for him though a very bitter sense of irony in all of this. He says he would gladly return to Rangers tomorrow, especially if he can help in Walter Smith’s attempts to stabilise the club.
He would be willing to do so for around half of the wages he might earn himself elsewhere. All he would ask for in return is a stake in the future of the new Rangers company.
He insists such a deal would not be about money. And there’s the irony right there. Because Boumsong insists the chance to make a quick buck was not the reason he chose Rangers in the first place.
Which is why he still can’t get his head around why the club was willing to take any kind of risks over his contract.
He said: “Believe me, I could have gone to other clubs for more money. I was a free agent at the time and sometimes it is not about money. I wanted to go there because they believed in me and they wanted me.
“They wanted to build a team with me a big part of it so I decided to go. They trusted me and I trusted them so I signed.”
MORAVCIK on 9TH NOVEMBER 2015 9:50 PM
Great post on Celtic Minded by Pablo Escobar ………
Gosh! He sounds mildly peeved!-:))
DUMBHOY on 9TH NOVEMBER 2015 9:52 PM
I prefer cups and titles not awarded with the record showing EXPUNGED! For future generations the question will then ALWAYS be asked WHY?. A SHAME STAIN that would never be forgotten…
———————————————————–
Totally agree.
I’ve just read an article on the BBC website about Michael O’Neill . It was with shortbread’s Dick Wilson on the third of November this year
There were rumours circulating that some representatives from Celtic had been in contact with Michael about him possibly becoming our manager, as I said earlier only rumours.
At the end of the interview , Michael said he would like to manage in Scotland. This, possibly, may have been where the rumours started.
There is no way BDO or OLDCO will appeal ….. The decision of the 3 Law Lords is too DEFINITE …..IN ESSENCE, THERE ARE NO GROUNDS FOR APPEAL ….. Get your ‘ammunition ready for the SFA / SPFL / sevco …….
How similar is this to the Russian athletics cover-ups…..
If we recall
#notonewco then you will also I recall that this was not achieved by filling up just the celtic fan websites, it was all about reaching out to the many other genuine football fans
So, if you have some spare time, rather than writing 25 pages of churn about the same topic on CQN
Why not get out there and start speaking to work colleagues,neighbours on other fans web sites and get the message out and let’s understand the empathy around thus topic, perhaps it can become a snowball
Or even bounce a few tweets and or face book messages in a neutral manner
Sample follows
All of Scottish football impacted !
https://t.co/BeaBRCAjvI
Leagues /positions/releg
Cup matches/finals
European qualifying
Remember , just about every team was cheated here ! That’s the message ! let’s not have Scottish football as the laughing stock of world football, let’s clean it up……..
Stripping of titles etc etc.
Irrelevant symbolism. A two minute triumph. Pub bombast. Forgotten after the second pint.
The only prize worth having is Rangers continuing and ongoing irrelevance on the football field.
Go for the hip pocket nerve.
That`s what will really hurt.
Hola CQN ! It’s been a while…..
Suggesting that Rangers* be stripped of titles accumulated during the EBT years is like trying to carve a mark on running water. The situation is fluid and the tsunami of pish flooding in the direction of those who wish the game to be administered fairly seems overwhelming. Radio, tabloids, ex Celts trotted out like the pawns they are still to realise they are – we know the machinery is in full flow.
BIG DEAL.
There is something between the words of all of them, something that matters more than words. You know it and I know it. The tide they push, fervently and mindlessly is about to back up on them.
You can only manipulate events and circumstance if you hold power over the ignorant. In Scottish football those days are long gone.
Those far older and wiser than I am will be acutely aware of the difference between great Celtic players and great Celtic men. I wont labour the point but Paul Lambert on radio tonight reinforced my opinion of him as a great Celtic player, It is inconceivable that his words would have been uttered by Boyd or McStay, And on the latter……
Lambert was a tremendous player, a great Celtic captain. I was once asked by a younger Celt if McStay was more like Lennon, or Lambert, or Petrov in style. When I suggested he was all three rolled into one and multiplied by 10 my young associate looked like I had taken leave of my senses. Which Lambert clearly did tonight.
TJ
Now they can’t even claim to be World Record Cheats after the Russian athletics doping scandal.
Have they not suffered enough?
Fargos on
This is how I would like the Record Books to read (e.g. same as Wiki etc):
Italy ‘Serie A’ 2004-2005 – Not awarded [title revoked due to *Calciopoli].
Scotland SPL/SFA 2001-2009 – Not awarded [titles and cups marked* revoked due to tax evasion by RFC(IL)].
Good Evening.
In case of interest, here is a new blog about title-stripping and that bizarre statement from Sevco today…
https://theclumpany.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/where-should-i-stick-this-asterisk/
Charlotte Fakes tweeted Walter Smith had an EBT.
Our game is run by criminals-its hard to imagine a new world of Scottish football where the brave vanquish the villains-its all very depressing-relying on the present governing bodies to do the right thing is naive and in vain-they are criminals hiding crimes