Assuming Sir David Murray was telling the truth to Sky News in March (bear with me), there is a £10m gap between the sum recorded in Rangers accounts as paid to EBTs and the recipients revealed by the BBC last night.
It may be that the BBC didn’t receive information on some Rangers employees but we should also consider what other non-employees received payment from an Employee Benefit Trust, like Graeme Souness, who was employed by another club at the time.
What other clubs’ employees received a piece of that £10m? Was it only Blackburn Rovers? Did they know about it? Did an employee of another SPL club receive payment from Rangers Employee Benefit Trust?
What about journalists? The cosy relationship between football clubs and sports journalists has been one of the most incongruous features of this debacle.
What about officials? Yes, officials?
We know cash went out of the company, we know how much is unaccounted for, we just don’t know where it went. The already-established multi-association nature of these revelations (it involved a club registered by the Football Association in England) puts the matter beyond the immediate scope of the Scottish authorities, which is some comfort.
Many of the facts have been revealed but this will be a story that is still giving a decade from now. Before Rangers disappear into the ether, the authorities (football and other) must use all leverage possible to discover where that £10m went.
I didn’t see a penny. Did you?
I am still trying to digest the enormity of what was revealed last night. This could take a while.
You can buy a hard copy of the new issue of CQN Magazine via Magcloud here.
The graphic below is just for a flick through, to read the magazine go here to it’s dedicated site.
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A dying flame, you’re free again
Who could love and do that to you
All dressed in black, he won’t be coming back
Well save your tears, you got years and years
The pains of seventeen’s
Unreal they’re only dreams
Save your crying for the day
Fool if you think it’s over
‘Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it’s over
I’ll tell you why
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
Fool if you think it’s over
It’s just begun
Miss teenage dream, such a tragic scene
He knocked your crown and ran away
First wound of pride and how you cried and cried
Well save your tears, you got years and years
(Fool if you think it’s over)
(Fool if you think it’s over)
I’ll buy your first good wine
We’ll have a real good time
Save your crying for the day
Fool if you think it’s over
‘Cos you said goodbye
Fool if you think it’s over
I’ll tell you why
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
Fool if you think it’s over
It’s just begun
New born eyes always cry with pain
At the first look at the morning sun
Fool if you think it’s over
It’s just begun
(Fool if you think it’s over)
(Fool if you think it’s over)
maybe that was the referees cut, or it might have paid for the succulent lamb for the journalists cosy dinners
there is an anomaly here…
say laudrups wages were shown as to be
15k per week as per in the contract given to the sfa.
he then has an ebt providing another 10k per week
tax free hidden from the sfa.
surely someone asked the question at the sfa at the
time….
“how did you get laudrup (gazza, nerlinger etc ad infenitum)
on such a low wage”
soemone must have asked this question?
unless they were in on it…
The essence of a bung is that it should be discreet and untraceable. Unfortunately not all trails can be fully swept before, during or after.
Paul 67 – I have a question or questions which opens up another line of thought.
Did David Murray personally need an EBT payment? I doubt it, given the wealth already available to him for personal spending. So why is he extracting more than £6m through this route? The easy answer is of course greed, but, I wonder if this is the PRIMARY SOURCE of BUNGS?
If David Murray extracts the funds via the EBT he is then at liberty to put these into brown paper bags for onward unaccountable purposes.
So can David Murray personally account (as in deposited into personal bank having been extracted via EBT) for the £6m? If not, where did it go?
georgesmileycsc
HH
Subterranean,
Do you have a Prince Albert? If so, I may be able to put some work your way.
anyone got any gems from Mark Dingbat or the inmates at follow follow
I can’t see why they would make an EBT payment to Souness. Isn’t cash in a brown paper envelope the alleged usual route for such alleged payments to alleged individuals (does that cover me legally?)
Has the FA in England announced an investigation into why a manager in their country would receive a payment from a club in another.
Has Blackburn Rovers made any comment? If a manager of my club had received £30K from a former club I would be interested to know why.
A WAR OF WORDS has erupted between the BBC and Rangers FC administrators from Duff & Phelps.
Paul Clark and David Whitehouse, both partners at Duff & Phelps, were appointed on 14 February to the collapsed club.
In last night’s BBC Scotland programme: Rangers, The Men Who Sold the Jerseys, the broadcaster alleged that administrators from Duff and Phelps were potentially conflicted in their role.
The argument is centred around whether or not Duff & Phelps partner David Grier knew about a deal which would see the club hand over three years’ worth of ticket sales to Ticketus.
Craig Whyte bought the club in 2011 but it was later revealed he used some funding from finance firm Ticketus by selling most of the next three years’ worth of season tickets.
Duff & Phelps has launched legal action against Whyte and his lawyer Collyer Bristow claiming that at a meeting, days before the deal was signed, they failed to declare the funds being used to complete the purchase of Rangers were from Ticketus, not Whyte.
BBC Scotland’s documentary alleges Grier knew about the deal and had ordered an invoice to be raised to Ticketus in June.
Grier denies any knowledge of the Ticketus deal.
In a response statement Grier said: “I categorically deny that at the time of the Craig Whyte takeover of Rangers, I had any knowledge that funds from Ticketus were being used to acquire the club. This accusation is wrong, highly defamatory and betrays a lack of understanding of the facts.
“Neither I nor any of my colleagues at MCR [now Duff & Phelps] provided any professional assistance to Liberty, Wavetower or Craig Whyte, in raising funds, performing financial due diligence, structuring or agreeing the terms of the purchase of the club from the Murray Group.
“Financial due diligence and other work was provided by Saffery Champness, a firm of chartered accountants who specialise in this area and our primary role was to provide assistance to Liberty Capital in negotiating a settlement and assignment of the debt due to Lloyds Bank.
“The reality is that when my concerns about the use of Ticketus funding crystallised over the summer of 2011, I took immediate steps to raise these concerns with controlling directors of Rangers and HMRC.”
The BBC also claims it has seen an email from Whyte’s lawyer to Grier concerning the completion of the takeover, which states the “Ticketus agreement will become unconditional”.
“The email referred to in tonight’s programme to Ticketus dated 19 April 2011 mentions the possibility of raising funds for working capital but does not provide any information of quantum or terms of such a proposal. To suggest this email establishes an awareness of Ticketus providing acquisition funding is absurd and ridiculous,” said Grier.
“Once we discovered the full extent of the funding relationship between Ticketus, Liberty Capital and the club, we took immediate steps to raise our concern with controlling directors of Rangers and HMRC.”
Duff & Phelps is currently in discussions with its legal advisor on whether it will bring a claim against the BBC.
Administrator Clark said: “The allegations made in tonight’s programme against Duff & Phelps are untrue, a distortion of the facts and highly defamatory. Discussions are already underway with our solicitors with a view to bringing legal proceedings against the BBC.
“We made a number of offers to assist the BBC in order they would not make the fundamental errors broadcast… and for some inexplicable reason the reporter Mark Daly declined these.
“We had also hoped to give interviews stating our case on camera but received strong legal advice against this course of action, bearing in mind the legal proceedings Duff and Phelps have raised against Collyer Bristow. The BBC were informed in writing from our solicitors.
“In broad terms Mr Daly failed miserably to understand the difference between working capital arrangements for the club and acquisition funding.”
VP
Thanks for that.
AlexTomo’s blog,last paragraph.wtf
I will however, put up another blog on all this with (pace Jonathan Swift) a Modest Proposal which appears to get Rangers and Scottish football, off the hook. Stay tooned.
Paul,
Well done to you and all those other bloggers who have put the truth out there. A heartfelt thank you.
I guess the SPL and SFA lawyers will be busy just now coming up with a variety of scenarios to steer their clients through these stormy waters, they’ll need to be good to recognise all the stars as fate aligns to to sink RFC(IA).
Interestingly there has been no apology issued by RFC(IA) who are currently trying to recruit players. The more brazen you are the more you get away with?
Maybe we can now get together and offer blueprints to take the game forward, I’m sure that like me there are many with professional skills that we would voluntarily offer to the game if it helped save it, just a thought. They only need to admit they need help.
Hail Hail
rt rev david hay on 24 May, 2012 at 12:38 said:
Everybody was in it
How do you think amafanny, nacho ned and the alky were allowed to pay their respective fines to the court at a rate of 25 pounds sterling a month over 3 years ?
Hail Hail
Even Alex Thomson is playing down any immediate action re. Masons F.C.
How long DOES it take to slaughter a rabid donkey?
Maybe I’m just suffering a comedown from last night’s high.
I admit I expected instant repercussions today.
Stupid me.
Saint Stivs
Mark Dingwall
Updated Thursday, 24th May 2012
Is there anyone involved with the Craig Whyte saga who doesn’t have a cloud hanging over them?
Wednesday’s BBC documentary – Rangers: The Men Who Sold The Jerseys – fell into several parts. The first part – concerning the operation of Employee Benefit Trusts under the auspices of the Murray Group – I will leave for now except to say that in general it confirmed guesswork as to the beneficiaries of the schemes rather than presenting confirmation of an elaborate conspiracy.
The second part of the programme was far more substantial and worrying. Rangers fans are naturally suspicious of the spin attached to BBC Scotland’s output on the club given the widespread perception that the organisation’s North British operation is institutionally biased against the club.
Merely to dismiss the material presented because of the media source would be both childish and stupid for those with the club’s best interests at heart. A cool examination of the source evidence is what is needed.
The central argument is that Duff & Phelps should be removed from their position as administrators of the club due to the involvement of David Grier in his role as advisor to Craig Whyte during the May 2011 takeover of the club. Further than that – the evidence presented paints a picture of his being aware that the £24million deal with Ticketus was being used to fund the deal to purchase the club and not merely being used to provide working capital. Mr Grier denies this.
From a reading of the email traffic generated between various parties there is no mention of the sums involved in various transactions. However, in the email from Ross Bryan of Octopus Finance (the Ticketus parent company) of 24 May 2011 he mentions “this first season’s tickets” and the invoicing arrangements. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18175731?
I would say that clearly demonstrates that more than one season’s worth of tickets are involved and that the sums involved would be known to the recipients of the email – David Grier and Phil Betts. Then there is the email of 23rd June from Phil Betts to David Grier where he requests the raising of an invoice and backdating the issue date to 9th May.
Whatever else he may by Mr Grier is not an unintelligent man. It beggars belief that a man employed as Whyte’s chief adviser during negotiations for the purchase of the club who was intimately involved in the operations of the club in May/June 2011, following the takeover on May 6th, would be unaware of the sums involved in the invoices he is arranging for the issuance of. And secondly, would David Grier, as one of the architects of the deal and aware of the finances of RFC not raise an eyebrow at the eye-watering sums Ticketus were providing supposedly as working capital? And if the Ticketus money was working capital why had it been dropped in one huge payment into the Collyer Bristow account and not called upon as and when necessary?
CONSPIRACY OR COCK-UP?
The behaviour of Duff & Phelps throughout the period of administration has been a mystery. Why did it take so long to organise pay-cuts when the players wage bill is the single biggest cost to the club? Why did they entertain ludicrous get-out clauses?
It is in the evaluation of various bids that their behaviour has been at its oddest.
The price of obtaining exclusivity ranged from half a million (Blue Knights), £250k (Charles Green) to zero in the case of Bill Miller.
Bill Miller was led up the garden path with regard to what he was taking on. Mr Miller is a wealthy man but a cursory examination of Bill Miller’s finances showed he simply didn’t have pockets deep enough to finance Rangers by himself.
It took his advisors all of two days of due diligence to discover they were the latest in a long line to have been lied to by Duff and Phelps. He was led to believe there would be a funding shortfall of between 1 and 4 million over the next three years whereas we are in fact looking at approximately 10 million for this coming season.
He would have been a disaster as an owner. And he realised that himself once he knew the facts.
Bill Ng – look at his statement and comments after he withdrew from the process.
The Blue Knights – three times they went to bed assured they would be announced a preferred bidder the next day – and each time the goal-posts moved. Then at the last minute Charles Green appears from nowhere? It’s curious to say the least.
You have a choice to believe they are bent or organizationally unable to cope with the complexity of the administration of Rangers given the wreckage David Murray and Craig Whyte left behind.
DID CLARK AND WHITEHOUSE KNOW WHAT HAD GONE BEFORE THEM?
This is the crucial question. Or perhaps a series of questions?
I found it very curious that David Grier accompanied Paul Clark to meet with David Murray, they are pictured coming out of the Charlotte Square offices together. In fact in a meeting with the administrators I asked why the two of them were not interviewed separately as a means to discover any discrepancies between their stories?
Paul Clark was the cofounder of MCR – the company for which David Grier worked (joined them in 2005) when advising Whyte and which was bought over by Duff & Phelps. Mr Whitehouse worked for MCR. Mr Grier is now a partner in Duff & Phelps. Had Mr Grier failed to fully brief Mr Clark on the facts of the takeover and funding arrangements? Was Mr Clark perhaps a little too trusting of his old employee?
Administrators should have been all over their own records and those of RFC – did they simply miss email traffic and lawyers letters where one of their own partners was – on any reading of the material – centrally involved in the Ticketus transaction, the Revenue investigation of which was the trigger for the collapse of the club?
£24 million from Ticketus – what did David Grier imagine it was it for? The purchase from Murray Group of a consignment of moonbeams and snake oil? Did he ask?
Rather than there being £10m missing from the EBT calculation is it not more likely that the BBC hasn’t published the full list of recipients among the players and management?
There would be no reason for them to put all the information they have in the public domain and a number of reasons for them not to do so.
I reckon there will be a follow up special on BBC News naming FPLG and the Cardigan.
Ah just done one, it was a weight off my mind
David Grier: “Neither I nor any of my colleagues at MCR [now Duff & Phelps] provided any professional assistance to Liberty, Wavetower or Craig Whyte, in raising funds, performing financial due diligence, structuring or agreeing the terms of the purchase of the club from the Murray Group.
“Financial due diligence and other work was provided by Saffery Champness, a firm of chartered accountants who specialise in this area and our primary role was to provide assistance to Liberty Capital in negotiating a settlement and assignment of the debt due to Lloyds Bank.”
Wasn’t paying off the debt to the bank a matter that formed part of the purchase of the club by Whyte’s company?
And if Saffery Champness performed due diligence on Rangers what did they find?
Dick,
I don’t even have a Prince record…
…digital or Super 8?
A Rankers boardroom member was the best gig in town if you could get on the wagon- I wonder if the “innocent victims of the ordinary Ibrox staff” like cleaners etc received EBT’s?
Aggie the Tea wummin better come clean!
Ernie
Of course cardihun, sally and dallas will be kept to the end along with Traynor, Young, Jackson , Dougal and Clark
Dick Byrne,
If you have any evidence of suspected corruption of Paul67,by an offshore tax involved Scottish national, I expect you to name the insidious, corrupt individual.
Don’t hide behind a clever, deliberately opaque nom be blog.
Bawsman, you might be right – perhaps Celtic should hold fire on commenting on the details of the BBC documentary and the potential wrongdoing by Rangers.
However I still believe we need to comment on the Juninho EBT. The BBC (in the name of balance, I suppose) have named the other clubs who set up EBTs, however by stating that we failed to disclose the payment to the SFA, it implies wrongdoing on our part albeit on a smaller scale and frequency than Rangers.
We need to keep the focus on them rather than allow the media to turn this into an “Old Firm” problem – we know how much they enjoy doing that!
HH
Tombola
Interesting Email from my 55 years a Hertz supporter pal in Edinburgh –
Seems his weekly / rather tame these days Monday Club ritual with other Hertz punters t urned into a real ding dong argument .[ last Monday night ]
First barney related to whether Hertz 5 – Hibs 1 should be celebrated or viewed as being somewhat hollow given the pathetic nature of the opposition and the incompetent / not fit for purpose Officiating ..
Much bigger barney re a Hun Newco in the SPL resulting in a boycott of Scottish fitba. Seems it got really heated . Angry words exchanged etc. Pal says that if his 15 strong Monday Club can be taken to be an accurate sample of those who attend Hertz games —-then attendance at Hertz games will be @ 30 per cent down should there be a Hun team in the SPL..
Puffs & Phled are full of it…..they just want to keep slaughtering the succulent.
Too much luvvly jubbly in the pot for that parcel of rogues to do the honourable thing and fall on their own blunted swords.
“Much sound and fury,signifying nothing.”
And while I’m at it……for all you hun lurkers : GIRFUY,Glasgow’s Green & White and you’d better not forget it,ya cheatin’,lyin’ scum hun bams.
Saint Stivs on 24 May, 2012 at 12:22 said:
Paul,
dont tell anyone, just between us.
I had an EBT when I was working at Mimtec.
Brings back memories that place lol.
It is clear that Doncaster is under intense pressure to save them,probably from the folk that gave him the gig in the first place.
Nobody can help them now,Doncaster just needs to grow a set,and admit to them that he cannot do anymore for them.
The only solution is to close them down.
Interesting to hear Daily’s telephone conversation with D&P’s PR man regarding their no show at a pre arranged interview.
I assume ‘Ramsay’ is Ramsay Smith of Media House.
Are D&P paying Media House themselves or are they being paid from money that should rightly be going to creditors?
thomthethim @ 12:47,
It would be more than my life’s worth to reveal his identity – he may be based overseas but Mr Awe-Naw’s tentacles reach far & wide (if the gossip is to be believed).
Donkey Doncaster’s too busy to comment at the moment….he’s busy lookin’ for carrots.
I wonder if the compensation Rangers paid the SFA for Smith was via an EBT?
Oh, wait a minute…..
Ernie
wasn´t it funny. Mark Daly has reduced Ramsay Smith to less than a tea boy on national television
HAil HAil
Good Afternoon.
Having had the chance to digest the content of the Mark Daly documentary for BBC’s Panorama programme, I have reached a conclusion. That conclusion is that much of what was reported in the programme, while factually accurate and presented with skill and documentary backup, does not actually make a great deal of sense.
To be clear, by that I mean that Mark Daly did a fine job with the material he was given or uncovered, but when you look at it all together it does not make sense, or at least does not present what could be described as a whole picture.
Today, the papers are full of the Duff & Phelps angle, whether they should resign and were they complicit? Others concentrate on the players named as being paid through EBT’s, were their registrations unlawful and so on.
Some mention is made of the collosal losses incurred in the Murray years, and there is the odd reference to the Porn King, and the notion that Prince Albert of Monaco was to become a Teddy Bear.
However, to me, the ould head is wrestling with some other questions that just won’t go away.
For example: Why was it that over such a prolonged period of time– that those players were paid through the EBT scheme while others weren’t? It is not as if all the players were great players– some of them made no appearances whatsoever– so why them and not others?
Virtually all of the 2001-2002 squad is in there, and there is clearly a pivotel moment around the commencement of the Advocaat years– although some of the EBT paid players were there before that having been signed by Walter Smith.
The ommission of Smith as an EBT recipient also raises some questions. Of the recent Rangers managers, he and McCoist are the only ones NOT to have been paid by way of EBT– yet Souness, Advocaat, McLeish and Le Guen were. Now it may just be that Walter did not want paid by way of an EBT at all, and took separate accounting advice– after all one of his partners in the Pub business was an accountant so maybe Walter steered clear. Yet why do so, if all the acccountancy advice from Rangers and MIH was that this payment method was perfectly legal?
It can’t be that Walter did not know of the EBT scheme. Certain players from his first tenure of management are named as recipients. Amorouso, Ferguson, Malcolm and Moore to name but 4.
Maybe, they were only paid by way of EBT after Walter left?
Ok, well if that is so, how do we explain the contracts of Pedro Mendes and Steven Davis, both of whom were very much Smith appointments, and both of whom received hefty EBT payments.
Consider too, that the Wee Tax case– the share option scheme— was in place prior to the EBT scheme as I understand it, and that the tax being claimed under that scheme may well relate to payments made to who knows who dating back to pre 1998?
So Walter Smith is a strange ommission for me and someone should ask a question or two there.
Also, as I said earlier, why did some players get EBT’s and others didn’t.
For example, in 1999 Rangers signed- Dodds, Mols, Tuguy,Pentilla, Adamczuk, and Myhre (on loan). Dodds, Mols and Pentilla were paid through EBT’s– why not the others?
Why would Davis and Mendes be paid through EBT’s much later yet not Lafferty, McCulloch, Beasley, Hemdani and so on.
Why would the club have what they claimed to be a sure fire tax saving scheme all set up and not use it for ALL of their employees? That is just weird.
Perhaps, the answers can be found by asking some of the lesser names on the BBC list.
Everyone knows of Campbell Ogilvie. He was at Rangers from way back– 1978— all the way through to 2005. He was there when the wee tax scheme came into play and when the EBT commenced. He was paid under that scheme. He sat on the same Rangers Board as Hugh Adam.
So why are we not having interviews with Campbell just to clear up, what went on, why it went on, why some benefited from the scheme and why some were just not included?
Then there is the even more curious case of Douglas Odam.
Who?
Well Douglas John Odam is a Director of Ireland Alloys Ltd– one of the MIH group of companies. His fellow Directors are Sir Minty, William James Gold, Michael Scott McGill ( a name that should be familiar ), James Donald Gilmour Wilson, Keith Andrew Grandison, and David William Murray Horne.
Now until 2003, Odam was the finance Director at Rangers PLC. He was also a Director of Azure Support Services Ltd and Azure catering Services Ltd.
Odam is named as being paid through the EBT.
Now this fella was at Rangers when Murray arrived I believe, but later left to become a biggish cheese in the MIH empire. He played a key role for example in the signing of Arteta, and so would be party to the payment negotiations etc. He was also left to face the wrath of the shareholders by the absent Murray on more than one occasion and his “creative” accountancy has been questioned by Rangers fans going way back. See here:
http://www.followfollow.com/news/tmnw/agm_report_66218/index.shtml
Now Odam will know who was paid through EBT’s and why– so anyone wanting to get info about this whole affair may well be best advised to ask him.
However, and even more interesting character is Andrew Dickson. He is another who received a few quid by way of EBT. Here is his official profile– and just have a look at his duties:
http://www.rangers.co.uk/coaching-staff-profile/article/1529357
Now here is a fella worth speaking to on all things contractual. He has been there since 1991, is a qualified accountant and can probably spout chapter and verse on players contracts, who gets what and who doesn’t. Of course he will also be able to point to what was registered with the SFA and what wasn’t– after all that is his job it would appear.
So, beyond all the players etc it is these three gentlemen who pique my interest.
Further, I wonder who and how any of these gentlemen contributed to the documentation required for the club licensing processes at national or European level- especially the provisions of the European Licensing Criteria, the details of which can be found here– just click on part three UEFA club licensing and it is the bottom folder that opens up:
http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/football_document_libraries.cfm?page=2570
Basically, there is an awful lot of legal documentation that has to be there for “AUDIT” to ensure compliance.
Another thing that strikes me as curious is that apparently not a single person named as an EBT recipient would even speak to Mark Daly. And none of the players who were never apparently paid through EBT’s know anything either. Now that is an odd state of affairs– a rare case of unanimous and collective silence. A Rangers FC Omerta?
Yes, Mark Daly raises an awful lot of questions and it goes all the way back to Holmes.
Not David, but Sherlock:
I wonder if anyone in the mainstream media has read Silver Blaze by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? If not they should because there they will find a very interesting question surrounding the curious incident of the dog in the nightime!
“The question is, my dear Watson, why did the Dog not bark?”
Whytey’s eyes will be bulging efter watching that Prog last night…
The main aim for the MSM now will be the Newco. This will prevent the stripping of titles.
Indeed it would not surprise me if at the end of it all Celtic will be punished(re Juninho) and Rangers (old & new) escape ‘Scot free’ !
Half Time Tombola
Paul67 has already covered this.
Just a quick comment on Juninho. Juninho had an EBT for a short period while he was at Celtic. He had no side letters or contracts from Celtic and tax was paid on money paid into the EBT. ‘Nothing to see here’
News of BBC documentary reaches the countryside.
Reaction captured on film.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru47WGBEwMM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Hail! Hail!
Los Dufferos are still spinning lies….like all good fascist apologists….M. Daly gave them ample opportunity to respond and they declined.
The way of obscurantism : cover the dung in writs and spout ambivalent legalese;hopefully the stench will be covered by enough verbiage.
A rose by any other name……