Charles Green, owner of “The Rangers Football Club Limited“, formed in May this year, yesterday released a remarkable statement yesterday, ahead of the SPL Commission into How Rangers FC, formed in 1872, registered football players for over a decade.
“In short, what was decided by the SPL membership is that Rangers was finished as a member of the SPL. Despite this, the SPL now see the new owners of the company, and the new company itself, which owns all the assets of Rangers FC – including SPL championship titles – as fair game for punishment for matters that have nothing to do with us at all.”
We dealt with the purchasing of history on here some months ago. Once we realised it was possible, I snapped up ancient Egyptian history, the period from the pharaohs until Mark Antony. I AM responsible for the Pyramids of Giza but any slavery which may or may not have been used in their construction is NOTHING to do with me.
No one complained about the use of slaves at the time and I am sure each pyramid would have been constructed whether slaves were used of not. If slaves were so necessary for the construction I am sure “we” would have built many more.
Mr Green seems keen to protest against the SPL process, however, he, frankly, fails miserably. He doesn’t “question the impartiality of the individual panel members” but assets “whatever decision they reach is a decision of the SPL”.
So that will be independent members reaching a decision for the SPL! I think he doth protest too little.
There is also a threat: “”To make it crystal clear, the new owners purchased all the business and assets of Rangers, including titles and trophies. Any attempt to undermine or diminish the value of those assets will be met with the stiffest resistance, including legal recourse.”
Charles Green took steps to undermine his new company’s claim on Rangers titles in a BBC interview in June when he said that if his CVA proposal was to fail (which it did) and Rangers were to be liquidated (which they are), “the history, the tradition, everything that’s great about this club is swept aside”.
“Legal recourse”, which is prohibited by Fifa and which the SFA accommodated from Duff and Phelps, acting on behalf of Rangers, will provide Scottish football with a further drama. We mentioned at the time that the true cost of the SFA being so accommodating would be a repeat performance.
Mr Green asks why the “football authorities do nothing to address an issue that was public knowledge for at least two years, and was reported in the Club’s accounts for several years”? I think I can help here. Sir David Murray, who owned Rangers during the duration of its Employee Benefit Trust years, categorically denied that the club issued players with second contracts which were not submitted to the authorities. He reiterated this point most recently on a Sky News interview in March.
The football authorities have no issues whatsoever with Employee Benefit Trusts, it’s player contracts they insist are registered. Rangers insisted they had no case to answer until the SPL set a deadline on Duff and Phelps to fully disclose the nature of the alleged second contracts.
Charles claims during those lurid weeks when the SPL and SFA were negotiating with Green, that Neil Doncaster “repeatedly stated he was not interested in stripping titles from Rangers”. If he had evidence of this, ANY evidence, it would be fascinating.
If not, we should dismiss this claim.
A curious barb is made in other directions, “Rangers was not the only Club in Scotland to use EBTs yet nothing was done and little has been heard about it”.
One more time, for Mr Green’s benefit, EBTs are not against football regulations whatsoever. They are entirely legal and permitted by the SFA and SPL. The SPL Commission is not investigating whether Rangers used EBTs or not, it will investigate whether or not all player contracts were registered.
Mr Green goes on to make varied comments against “powerful representatives from Clubs within the SPL…. who appear hell bent on inflicting as much damage on Rangers as possible”, and that some “clubs were placed in an invidious position and we believe their interests were not best served by those in more powerful positions”.
Let’s have some context here. If we were to make a list of those who inflicted most damage on Rangers, representatives from other clubs would scarcely merit a mention. Those who allowed the club to spend more than it earned for so many years, who introduced the perilous tax avoidance system, those who failed to make accommodations for HMRC’s claim when it was first made, and those directors who personally benefited from the EBT scheme all carry primary responsibility.
Then would come the cheerleaders for the disastrous Craig Whyte regime – those who last year campaigned for the takeover, including putting pressure on Lloyds Banking Group to accept the terms.
Rangers opponents were spectators throughout this period. Any suggestion that our club were anything but opponents to Rangers, and alleged victims of trophies won by illegally registered players, when they should have been campaigning on behalf of their rivals, seriously misreads what was an established Glasgow rivalry. Of course it would be the same the other way – and rightly so.
Despite clearly feeling strongly about the Commission, Green didn’t address the key point….
There was no denial of the central charge that for a decade or more Rangers fielded improperly registered football players.
Yesterday some people suggested Green had offered the Lance Armstrong defence but Armstrong denied he was guilty while refusing to participate in the investigation into doping. This is a different matter altogether. Green has offered up something for every conceivable paranoid condition without actually claiming Rangers are wrongly accused.
The headlines today are all about titles being stripped but that is not the main topic in play. More importantly, after titles are stripped, what punishment will the SPL Commission levy on the Rangers membership, granted to Sevco in June?
The sheer scale of the charge makes this question incalculable. The toxicity attached to that membership is untenable and no bogeymen at other clubs, at the SPL or SFA are responsible for that.
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Tally,
according to the list we also had Brozek, he must have still been registered with us.
Tallybhoy’s testimony adds further weight to the growing evidence of systematic and state sponsored Erinaceinaeic cleansing.
Dontbrattbakkinanger
16:54 on
11 September, 2012
TBB- not for the first time you raise an interesting point- why did the hedgehog population in the Western isles reach the level where they were considered pests?
Fewer predators? Less prolific use of pesticides? Or are the roads quieter as ole Johnny Clash refuses to pay to put his Opel Kadett on the ferry?
THey are a non-native species. There are no predators in Outer Hebrides, with the exception of the ecologically devastating ‘felis catus domesticus’. The outer islands have some of the most important ground nesting birds in North-West Europe. Hence the need to extirpate our little spiny insectivore friends ( also with a penchant for foraging the jellied delicacy inside oval shells).
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nowoldandgrumpy says:
September 11, 2012 at 17:15
2 0 i Rate This
Interesting in Greens radio interview when asked to name the people who caused the problems at RFC(nil), he replied saying that was history, but I thought he bought that!
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Watching Australia against Jordan in a WC qualifier on Eurosport
I can now see how Scotland beat them 3-1
Australia are a poor side and nowhere near the team they were a few years ago
Live match on Eurosport over here just now – Jordan v Australia.
No Celtic players involved, thankfully.
HH!!
Tallybhoy 17.08
Found one in the garden a number of years ago – ‘phoned the SSPCA who very kindly came and took him/her away
I found one in my garden as well. Mistakenly phoned the local Chinese takeaway, however they did come round and kindly took it away for me. And they didn`t even apply a delivery charge.
….and as for the Tour of Britain’s foray into the Badlands of D&G, I hope Cav and Wiggo have remembered to bring their padlocks.
TBB – I think CL has won 3 competitive games, two of which were against the Euro-diddies of Lichtenstein.
I know the huns like to count their title hoard and the thought of having some taken off them is like a wrecking ball to the Berlin-Wall of their Psyche but I actually think it is the terror of “”starting over” from scratch that is driving their denial agenda- even if they do transfer all the Empire drag-act and the Triumphalistic transvestism to Newco if some slowly wake up into a clear morning of lucidity and realise its all gone…then I think many of them will burn their jets right out of the dark side…they are after all the glory-hunters par excellence- how will they ever catch us up?
Levein has worse competitive international than both Vogts & Burley.
BERTI VOGTS
Played 13, Won 5. Win% 38.
GEORGE BURLEY
Played 8, Won 3. Win% 37.
CRAIG LEVEIN
Played 9, Won 3. Win% 33
His 3 wins were Liechtenstein home and away, Lithuania home
test?
test
OK, that might have been my fault. Sorry.
Test ……………is blog frozen?or am I on an ole thread?
Paul
It’s allowed:o)
And here I thought it was all over ….
and we return… o))
P67
good job I’m here to keep you on your toes… o)
I think I also noticed oldtim trying to sneak back online..
Thought my phone was on the blink.
50p for the meter Paul?
hendrix
12.30 mass at St Simons Partick tomorrow..
I’ll light a candle for your grans recovery…
Old leather face back bumping his gums!!
Alistair Johnston speaks on the SPL charges
on Tuesday, 11 September 2012.
The Rangers Supporters Trust has been in correspondence with former Rangers Chairman Alistair Johnston and he has kindly agreed that we publish a synopsis of his thoughts on a variety of salient points in order that fans can have a better appreciation of the facts.
Let me explain my personal motivation here. If in any way I can spread my sentiments, which are based on a combination of knowledge of the facts, interpretation of events, and a philosophical understanding of culpability as it relates to punishment, that in some way would cause the Tribunal that is sitting to determine the destiny of Rangers heritage to pause for thought and provide more objective consideration of the case before them, then my agenda will be to a greater extent served. I just can’t sit by on the side-lines and watch a miscarriage of justice be activated by a kangaroo court. It is not my personal objective to denigrate the football institutions of Scotland, but their actions and words go a long way to influencing public opinion as to the interpretation of the events that have taken place and how members of the public frame their own opinions as a result.
The whole process has been established to satisfy a self-serving agenda by vested interests in the SPL. The SFA, however, is the supreme governing body of Scottish football and should invoke its ultimate authority to forestall the inevitable inequity that will ensue if the capital punishment decision is left to the SPL.
The SFA is complicit in all of this because they have not at least up until now had the courage to publicly acknowledge that they either ignored or did not really understand the well-publicized structure surrounding the relationship that Rangers FC had with certain of its players.
I have been reviewing my files from around April 2011 relating to the annual routine of Rangers FC applying for and being granted a license to participate in organized football in Scotland. Because of the publicity surrounding our club at the time, the SFA wrote to us asking for more details about the public speculation concerning our financial and tax situation. The latter obviously referenced the impact of the EBT schemes as creating a potential taxation liability. The club responded accordingly and provided details, as it had done in previous years, by declaring player salaries, bonuses, benefits, etc., but also payments made to a Remuneration Trust. The SFA compliance officers must have known, both from the description and context of the reports, that such expenditures had some connection to player compensation. However, without any further investigation at the time, Rangers FC received its SFA license to compete in the 2011/2012 season. Rangers, therefore, were entitled to believe that they were not in breach of any SFA regulation requiring reporting of player compensation. If there was any question that the essence of these payments to a Remuneration Trust could have endangered the proud historical record of our team, then why was it not raised long before then.
At best, the SFA is relying on inconsistent interpretation of its own rules, and to do this retrospectively is totally at odds with underlying principles of equity in the law. A lawyer representing Celtic recently was successful in having charges against that club dropped because of the inadequacy of the SFA’s prescribed rules, regulations, and sanctions. The same principle should apply here. If the SFA now decide to adopt a more focused evaluation of the data they request from its members in order to be granted a license, they should ensure that the legislation upon which they rely for enforcement and the corresponding sanctions are more transparent and predictable.
Let me also address the prevailing mood in certain quarters that seems determined to pile on to Rangers when they are vulnerable as confusion over the current structure and authority has allowed allegations and conjecture to trump reality as the institution of the club seems now to be a pawn where rhetoric, no matter how real or substantiated, prevails. Inflammatory and emotional words have been used and recited to justify this rush to judgment which I believe are fundamentally ill founded and out of proportion to the realities of the events that transpired.
First, when the previous football commission reported on EBT’s in a very high profile statement, they took the view that if Rangers was indeed guilty of structuring EBT schemes that transgressed the law or the rules of the relevant federations, then this was “close to match fixing.” This is the headline that in my opinion prompted the determination to slay Rangers with capital punishment, which in the case of our club would retrospectively alter the records of our historical achievements of which we are all so proud. “Match fixing” has connotations that correctly relate to bribery and corruption involving players and referees, fielding players that did not meet the criteria and qualifications of the governing bodies, e.g. they were over the age limit, or they were registered to another club, or they were playing while they had been banned for previous misdemeanours, etc., etc. Rangers has never been accused of or been remotely involved in any activity that would justify the terminology that whatever transgressions they might be found guilty of perpetrating was close to “match fixing.”
Secondly, and this is really important to the extent that it is a phrase that is prominent in the rhetoric of those whose objective is to crucify Rangers, and that is “financial doping.” The term as I interpret it is an attempt to relate an activity that is outlawed generally throughout the world of sport and regarded as cheating and taking undue advantage of banned stimulants and conjure up a connection with the financial mechanics of a club that has acknowledged that it in the clear light of day and very transparently embraced the use of Remuneration Trusts. Our opponents maintain, illogically, that without the use of EBT’s Rangers would have been unable to afford the quality of players that they fielded and thus gained an advantage over other clubs against which they competed. As an aside, it is interesting to recognize that there has been no complaints about Rangers fielding such players in the Champions League, the Europa League, etc., but the current accusations are being promoted not coincidentally by other members of the SPL who are now attempting to act as judge, jury and executioner against their consistently most potent rival.
The reality of the situation is that Sir David Murray, who was intimately involved in the architecture of these efforts to organize the business in a way to mitigate taxation which is totally legitimate and acceptable under all tenets of the law, would have signed and paid for these very same players whether or not EBT schemes were in effect or not. The only difference being one which only has a financial consequence, i.e. it would have increased Rangers reliance on bank debt. During most of the period under investigation by the upcoming SPL Tribunal, he as well as his company enjoyed a very mutually productive relationship with the Bank of Scotland. The Rangers Board, of which I was a member, consistently believed that if and when the debt reached a level where the bank became uncomfortable, Sir David as he did in 2004 when he underwrote a subscription for Rangers shares and thus eliminated much of the bank debt, would be able and willing to repeat this recovery effort. Whether or not he ultimately would have done so is now irrelevant, but what is clear is that “financial doping” is not and could never be construed as describing a situation where a club extends its credit facilities with a recognized financial institution. The level of the debt that a club is willing to tolerate, whether you are Celtic or Manchester United, is determined by that club in conjunction with the lender. Whether the amount involved is £10 million or £600 million is irrelevant to the principle.
On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that the malfeasance created by Craig Whyte when he manifestly used funds that did not belong to Rangers, i.e. taxes withheld from employees’ wage checks that rightfully should have been transmitted to HMRC, which avoided him having to invest his own money contrary to his expressed commitment to the Rangers stakeholders to do otherwise, and being either unwilling or unable (or both) to raise any credit to invest into Rangers, exposed our club as a victim of what could be loosely determined as “financial doping.” Thus, Whyte was able to pay the club’s operating expenses including player wages, but it was Rangers which suffered by being ultimately forced into liquidation.
Keep in mind, which is not always clear in the molasses of misinformation that is currently circulating, Rangers went into liquidation and suffered all the penalties and sanctions of which we are now aware, solely because of Mr. Whyte’s failure to pay HMRC the withholding tax that the club collected during the short term of his disgraceful proprietorship.
Finally, I would hope that the panel which has been charged with investigating Rangers’ activities will draw a large circle around a universe of relevant reference points that should be considered in assessing the magnitude of the allegations made against the Club. For example, was the accepted practice of mitigating players overall tax liability utilized by several of the biggest clubs in Europe by drawing up separate contracts segregating off their image rights, which essentially denied that any compensation related thereto was a function of their obligation to play football, any different in principle than the alleged actions of Rangers FC?
Admit nothing Paul. It was the old CQN that broke the blog …
Angry hedgehogs stickin’ some spikes into the ole bhlog there.
Jordan 1 Australia 0
25 mins left
johnnyclash
17:22 on 11 September, 2012
….and as for the Tour of Britain’s foray into the Badlands of D&G, I hope Cav and Wiggo have remembered to bring their padlocks.
—–
Lol the last thing £16m p.a. Team sky will be bothering about is a few knocked bikes
Tho’ the local lads might appreciate the carbon fibre on the trail up to the next coo auction :@)
HH
These latest pathetic utterances by Alastair Johnson, do these RFC IL Directors not believe they had responsibility to know or do anything? Always with him, mummy (aka BoS) would tidy up after our playtime. Get a grip man, we’re talking millions of pounds under your direct responsibilty. Mummy’s boys the lot of them!
I reckon Mr Green is playing a blinder, he needs the Sevco 2012 orcs supporting him with hard cash, when the cash is suitably laundered and decontaminated, he can transfer the clean money into off shore bank accounts for the benefit of Mr Whyte and fellow asset strippers. The only thing that can stop the daylight robbery is the liquadators seizing back the assets which were….. Ahem sold to Mr Green, he needs the SFA or SPL to close him down before before that happens.
Mr Green, Mr Whyte….. My heroes.
And the MSM keep on going with the head in the sand :>)
HH
Jordan 2 Australia 0
15 mins left
Stevo,
I’m forever calling mccoist a troublemaker and I’ve said that him, no surname and jimmy bell are the worst bigots over there, imo. I certainly dont feel sorry for him being used, but he is nonetheless.
Kayal33 – 18:19 on 11 September, 2012
Oh dear, it looks like Alistair Johnston retains part of the historical obsession with Celtic – we get mentioned twice in his statement.
For clarity, what does this refer to:
“A lawyer representing Celtic recently was successful in having charges against that club dropped because of the inadequacy of the SFA’s prescribed rules, regulations, and sanctions.”
Again, obfuscation at work with lots of verbiage over EBTs and use of EBTs while the SPL will be reporting simply on whether dual-contracts were in operation. Also some deflection with the raising of ‘image rights’
And, of course, it was the SFAs fault for not catching them cheating sooner and it was only because of Craig Whyte that liquidation looms. Fantasy.
S
Why is Commons not in the Scotland team..? …….rhetorical question of the year….!!!
Alastair Johnston’s response is a crock. He and the “worlds best administrator” know fine well the relevant rule is that all documentation must be provided to the SPL at the time of the players registration. Any subsequent amendments must be provided as well
It’s hardly viable to state 10 (yes TEN ) years after you start this practice that you fessed up when asked. For the previous 10 years the side letters, which are binding legal contracts under Scots Law, didnt go anywhere near the SPL or the SFA.
They were in fact deliberately excluded from the information provided every single year to the SPL and SFA. Deliberately, in connivance with a multitude of Rangers Directors.
The argument that Murray would just have written a cheque is completely at odds with reality. Murray has been a busted flush since 2008. he couldn’t and wouldn’t have covered the tax bill, a view supported by the fact he hasn’t paid a single penny towards the amounts owed to HMRC.
Johnston conveniently ignores the fact that the illegaly registered players won the league in 2008, 2009, and 2010. A period when Murray was unable to stem losses in his business which totalled over £330 million. His business was so bust the bank kept the balance sheet from insolvency only by converting debt to equity.
Johnston isn’t a fool, however he clearly thinks the rest of us are if he expects us to believe this guff
Johson will be bumping his gums to his lawyer from behind plexi glass sooner or later I would imagine…
Good luck with that Alistair, a good looking boy like you should do well on the inside..
67Heaven … I am Neil Lennon..!!.. Ibrox belongs to the creditors
He’s 9th choice according to Pep Levein
blantyretim
Appreciated mate.
I know the chapel well through my work. Big polish congregation.
Hendrix
yes it has…
I go when I work at Yourkhill on a Wednesday..
Yorkhill even