Imran Ahmad, one of the founding fathers of Newco Rangers, was yesterday awarded £600k damages for malicious prosecution. He was charged with fraud in 2015 in connection with the deal that secured ‘a basket of assets’ from Rangers administrators three years earlier.
This brings the total payout from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) for malicious prosecutions in connection with the administration of Rangers to over £52m. The club failed to make provisions for legal challenges by HMRC, which were eventually lost. Assets were sold off to a newco, Sevco Scotland Ltd, later renamed The Rangers Football Club Ltd, before the club was put into liquidation.
The events of 2012 were often theatrical. The initial asset purchase agreement was signed with Sevco 5088 Ltd, before Sevco Scotland assumed the right. Any dispute surrounding this matter was concluded behind closed doors.
Administrators then went through the public motions of trying to sell players’ employment contracts, signed with Rangers to the Newco. This innovative move failed, with Steven Davis, Kyle Lafferty, Steven Naismith, Allan McGregor and others walking away.
The administrators also renamed Rangers as RFC 2012 PLC and permitted the Newco to use the trading style “Rangers”. This was seen as crucial by Sevco in picking up business which had previously gone to Rangers. They were able to present a sense of continuity to football fans, although hopes of entering the same league Rangers had played in were thwarted by a Dashing Grassroots-to-Boardroom Manoeuvre across the country.
Within hours of the assets auction being won by Sevco, a consortium of ‘Rangers people’ were keen to buy them. A campaign then followed which was often unpleasant, the assets’ new owners had no business or emotional connections to Oldco.
During this time, police, then COPFS, investigated actions around the sale and purchase and authorised charges. Reputations, including that of Mr Ahmad’s were burned. If you are looking for ‘clean hands’ in this matter, however, you may be disappointed.
£52m is an enormous portion of Scotland’s judicial budget – approximately £10 for every man, woman and child. In paying out for a malicious act, you accept that there was an intent to do harm to the victim, not simply to act without due care.
That is quite an admission from COPFS, who as recently as 2019 declined an offer from Mr Ahmad to apologise and walk away without further consideration. They really, really, did not want to admit to being in the wrong, but were left with no option.
This is how Scotland operates in our times, at least when it comes to football. An inquiry will follow many years from now, when all the actors have left the stage and memories are unable to recall details. Forgive me for being cynical.
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HH
Ten Men- BR was at Celtic Park about an hour ago, shirt and tie on……possibly him and Callum had a Sponsors meeting or similar?
Makes you wonder what else goes on that we don’t know about.
We live in a backwater run by people who are accountable to no one.
Utterly corrupt with DM still retaining the best bits of his business his reputation and Knighthood.
Remind me again – what was that club that we needed to be ignoring if we wanted to show we are ambitious…….
You are not being cynical however i would suggest it is unlikely that there will be a full enquiry. I was pretty close to the whole thing and despite my view that the entire matter was politically driven, i was ignored. Even with the benefit of hindsight the was a total shambles.
If it was taking place in Putin’s Russia it wouldn’t be any surprise but this country has major instituition problems which it continues to avoid , look at the amount of Public Enquiries taking place into failures of Public duties of the Police and the COPFS to name but 2 public services. It should shame them all in positions of responsibilty who are supposed to make sure these things don’t happen, but they do and continue to happen. Shameful gutless abdication of their responsibilities because of who it is or what’s at stake.
That’s a sad indictment of the Scottish judiciary, £52million!
£10 each, no matter what club you follow. Surely only the fans of the currant buns should stump up :)) por cierto
Dessybhoy – Aye, I often walk past the office of Murray Capital in Charlotte Square. I always shake my head and think “that guy should be in jail”.
Huns finances are nuts.
Work colleague ( few years back) had a school pal who was parachuted into Huns finance dept in a very senior role. Feedback was that he spent most of his time dealing with large invoices sort of appearing from the brothers and negotiating with the directors whether to pay ; the brothers were used to just hiking up the prices and randomly submitting over charged invoices.
Huns would attempt to buy the brothers off with hospitality packages.
Quite entertaining when the Masonic cabal eats itself …
HH
!!BADA BING!! on 1ST MARCH 2024 12:17 PM
Ten Men- BR was at Celtic Park about an hour ago, shirt and tie on……possibly him and Callum had a Sponsors meeting or similar?
——————————————————————————–
Hopefully that’s the case and not an injury. Cheers
McGregor could have an Achilles injury
Feb 16 2012 First Minister claims “ Celtic ‘will not prosper “ if Rangers go under.
That’s right the First Minister
67M CSC
The Blogger
For a long time.
52M wont be the final bill either.
Not good news. CalMac in a protective boot by all accounts.
An interesting follow up to the CST Open Meeting from James Forrest
https://thecelticblog.com/2024/03/blogs/celtic-fans-need-serious-leaders-we-dont-have-them-at-the-moment/?feed_id=6673&_unique_id=65e1a8c66c79c
A note of meeting from an attendee. (Not me)
https://sentinelcelts.com/2024/03/01/perfect/#comment-321266
This season is cursed ffs
It need hardly be said in the leader , we all know it already , but I’ll say it anyway.
There isn’t another club in the country that would have gotten that level of institutional / “establishment “ pro- action to the point , by their own admission, of maliciousness.
I doubt there’s another club in any other country in world football that would have done.
FOURSTONECOPPI on 1ST MARCH 2024 1:15 PM
This season is cursed ffs
————
I agree.
If we don’t win the league the most rational explanation will be injuries to key players at key times.
Just look at the difference CCV has made coming back.
What the blogger said @ 12:20pm.
Meanwhile the plod and the sheriff who felt empowered to behave the way they did?
Both off somewhere supping their pensions.
In the case of the sheriff, his boss recommended formal censure.
Colin Sutherland (a.k.a. Lord Carloway) overruled him.
https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/sheriff-lindsay-wood-to-retire-amid-rangers-controversy#:~:text=Sheriff%20Wood%20granted%2022%20warrants,%E2%80%9Cexecuted%20without%20proper%20safeguards%E2%80%9D.
Who give a Donald about the huns.
TLWIO
“There isn’t another club in the country that would have gotten that level of institutional / “establishment “ pro- action to the point , by their own admission, of maliciousness.
I doubt there’s another club in any other country in world football that would have done.”
There are probably a few. I reckon Juve did and Real might well. The pet clubs of pre 92 eastern Europe were certainly well looked after by their party bosses, and I’m sure there’s all sorts of stuff going on in the likes of Belarus, Russia and elsewhere the light don’t shine too bright.
All of which rather proves the wider point you’re making – it was as corrupt as that.
Brilliant summary.
A real eye opener and great to be back agreeing with every word
67ECW
Oct 31 2012 Rainjurz are officially liquidated
Ta dah CSC
Bad news if Callum is out for any length of time ,he has been remarkably durable considering the vast amount of football he’s played . Hopefully our other midfielders will step up and get the points we need .
The huns have been comparitively fortunate with injuries . If Tavernier was out for any length of time they would very likely drop points without his free kick and penalty goals .
🗣️”Callum came off at half-time during the week, he felt his achilles a little bit and his calf…we just have to assess that and see where he is at over the next 24 hours,’ said Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers.
TBB
Couldn’t argue with any of that.
As you say – corrupt.
Sunday, March 1st
I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.
My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.
I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.
I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.
Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.
I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.
There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.
I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.
Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.
bournesouprecipe
No, placed into Liquidation…..
The Best is Yet to Come…..
TonyBennettCSC
Greg Taylor Presser today
https://youtu.be/ORLDjw_xyJM?si=yBRko-Hxfyziy4Cl
HH
Celtic Mac
I left my heart in Sam Plant’s Disco
TonyBennett CSC
He doesn’t half ramble on does James Forrest. (the daily dissertation writer)
I suppose we can be thankful that he has ceased with his movie analogies that had minus zero to do with what he was rambling on about.
I shan’t be in any hurry back there.
Oompah Loompah
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv2y59r89vjo
Mark Lawwell is gone
So the rumours were true.
The bed setters have won.