Here’s the problem: this is a can of worms. If contagion was limited to Sir David Murray and other Murray Group executives, there may be more “appetite” to analyse what went wrong and what to do about it.
Rangers were a rogue football team, operating a tax scheme out with the law, failing to disclose appropriate documentation to HMRC, the SPL and SFA. Legal responsibility for the club’s actions lies with all directors, not just the majority owner. They have collective responsibility to ensure business is conducted appropriately. David King, Paul Murray, Alistair Johnston and former SFA president Campbell Ogilvie, were all Rangers directors during the EBT and DOS years.
The SPFL (formerly SPL) are also implicated. They set terms of reference for what became the Lord Nimmo Smith Commission, then amended those terms to only include matters which were, at that time, regarded as legal, explicitly excluding matters already confirmed as illegal.
They then failed to present evidence to Nimmo Smith of the five matters Rangers admitted guilt on during the First Tier Tribunal process, preferring only to present matters that were in dispute, but (temporarily) found in Rangers favour.
Having done this, they instructed their lawyer not to ask for an opportunity to appeal if the pending HMRC appeal was upheld. Instead, closing the book on a procedural appeal.
The SFA executives side just along the corridor from their SPFL counterparts. Yesterday they issued a remarkable statement:
“Specifically, Senior Counsel was asked to anticipate whether a determination in favour of HMRC, as announced today, could imply that there had been a breach of the Scottish FA’s Disciplinary Rules as they applied at the time of the EBT payments.
The clear opinion of Senior Counsel is that there is a very limited chance of the Scottish FA succeeding in relation to any complaint regarding this matter”.
I refer you to SFA Disciplinary Rule 71, Article 94.1:
“No recognised football body, club, official, Team Official or other member of Team Staff, player, match official, or other person under the jurisdiction of the Scottish FA shall bring the game into disrepute.”
They are asking you to believe that Senior Counsel told them no Rangers official brought the game into disrepute as a consequence of this matter. A matter which has left over £100m debt and hundreds of creditors unpaid, saw 55 players incorrectly registered, and one of the largest clubs in the country liquidated – the consequences of which will be permanent, no matter your view on Newco/same club.
All for an issue which Rangers directors gave evidence in court that the EBT scheme was undertaken to allow them to sign players they would otherwise be unable to pay. Ensuring an illegal sporting advantage.
Possible SFA sanctions for this include fines of up to £1m and/or expulsion from the game.
Sorry, but this is not a tenable position. The game was massively brought into disrepute; to issue a statement claiming otherwise just adds the stench of cover up to an already dreadful state. And bringing the game into disrepute is just scratching the surface, without going into consequences of the club’s actions on competitions.
I question the scope and remit given to Counsel, which was clearly limited in order to make it possible to deliver this statement. Who issued that scope and why it blinded Counsel to the clear matter of disrepute is another question to answer.
Executives at Hampden will have scoured news coverage this morning in the hope that this this will blow over. Scottish newspaper, TV and radio coverage is irrelevant. Instead, they should be looking to establish a recovery position for our game. This is not finished.
Those implicated by the contagion – the “heavily conflicted” do not get to decide that no action is to be taken; Scotland is not yet a Banana Republic.
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Alan Pattulo is the next cab off the rank in the coordinated SMSM campaign against title stripping.
Their opinion on the matter of EBTs and governance was of no relevance for the last 6 years, and it continues to be of no relevance. Ignore them, or if you can’t ignore them, mock them heartily.
They are a handful of hollow voices against a cacophony of outrage.
MACJAY1 @ 5:59 AM,
A good, solid, common sense approach from Davie Hayes there… Excellent.
Hope a few more will show a “backbone” and start stating the truth… a review is the way forward.
Hail Hail
HT
You know….it’s far to late to reconsider ;-))
You and the Minx have a wonderful day…..may your love for each other be a source of inspiration…..;-))
Hail Hail
Congratulations to Hamiltontim and the Minx on their wedding day. May they enjoy a long life of married bliss.
And much more importantly — every best wish to the soon to be Mr & Mrs Hamilton Minx or is it Minx Hamilton?
Either way, sounds like a Tory MP.
I had hoped to come to the reception tonight but Miss BRTH is all of 15 today and has belatedly decided that we are going out for dinner which she will not have to pay for!!
Hail Hail to the happy couple and everyone who joins in the celebrations.
All the best to the happy couple today. Hope they have a great time and take in every second of this wonderful occasion!
Word of The Day
amerce /əˈmɜːs/
verb (transitive) ( obsolete)
1. (law) to punish by a fine
2. to punish by imposing a fine not fixed by statute.
3. to punish by inflicting any discretionary or arbitrary penalty.
Derived Forms
amerceable, adjective
amercement, noun
amercer, noun
Word Origin and History for amerce
v.
1215, earlier amercy, Anglo-French amercier “to fine,” from merci “mercy,grace” (see mercy ). The legal phrase estre a merci “to be at the mercy of”(a tribunal, etc.) was corrupted to estre amercié in an example of how alegalese adverbial phrase can become a verb (cf. abandon ). The senseoften was “to fine arbitrarily.”
KTF
Goooood Morning CQN
Minx1888 (Helen) & HamiltonTim (Chris)
Hoooooop you both have a Champions day, relax and enjoy :-)
Oh Helen wins, you Post tomorrow as the “Craigmarloch couple”
Wish that was a treble :-)))
Philbhoy,
Only met you briefly at the stag….been meaning to ask…..canny believe yer 84….what’s yer age defying secret ;-))
FTSFA/FTSPFL
H.H.
Good luck & Best wishes to Hamiltontim & MINX on there Wedding Day a match made in Paradise :)
Best wishes to the happy couple today,and in the future.
Result,I think!
HH
Davidopolous
On the Scotsman article this is the sort of thing they drop in as fact.
Rangers received legal reassurance that their sub-trust method of payment was legitimate. Tax avoidance rather than evasion.
Now I’ll need to check back but memory tells me they were advised by Paul Waxendale Walker according to something I read (perhaps at the FTT) that they must stick to the guidelines to stay lawful.
They didn’t so the above by Patullo is an example of the sort of crap being pumped out knowing few will challenge it and so it becomes a matter of fact.
We are dealing with People of the Lie here who have no regard for truth or for others.
Side letters were the price RFC had to pay to get players to sign up to a scheme players would not sign up to without an indemnity.
Those side letters by their very existence nullified the trust aspect of a trust and made any payment wages under another name.
There is a propaganda war going on but you have to ask yourself why is it so difficult for People of the Lie to accept they did wrong, causing massive damage to our game in the process?
They should be aknowledging themselves the degree of harm and agree to the removal of titles themselves but it would seem People of the Lie simply are incapable of considering others.
Anditsthepoleagain
Patullo’s article, if anything, plays down what happened in the biggest scandal in British sporting history. It reads like a plea to move on, is full of whataboutery, carefully selects a key opinion, ignoring opposite views, like the one expressed by Sutton’s team mate and captain, Neil Lennon, has clear undertones of ‘haven’t they suffered enough?’, and totally ignores the realities of liquidation and incorporation.
He really should urgently read BRTH’s superb 7:55am post, and get properly informed about the seriousness of what happened.
“More than a whiff of dubiety” about 14 cheated trophies, indeed!
Chairbhoy,
No sure what the boxer David Hayes has to do with it….but I wouldn’t argue with him ;-))
H.H.
Hamilton Tim hope you and Minx have a memorable day followed by many days of the same.
BRTH. Perhaps as well you cannot attend as your years advance in line with your boots. I hear the Reception is a Standing Section only affair. :)
All the best to the Hamilton-Minxes on their big day…!
Best wishes to the Hamilton Janitor and his beautiful bride on their wedding day. Two of CQN’s finest and certainly it’s finest couple.
Love and HH on this great day
xxxxx
Auldheid
Speaking of the standing section, should they sit down in the 14th minute??
Best wishes To Hamilton Tim & Minx. Hope ye have a lovely day & many Happy Years together.
I hope ye’re team goes from strength to strength and in a few years that all of us, roasters included are back here celebrating ten in a row.
HT and MINX
Have a great day ! All the best !!!
Congratulations and best wishes to HT and the Minx.
Celtic’s finest.
HH.
Have a great day today Helen and Chris
Live long and prosper ☘️☘️☘️☘️
Auldheid
I remember something to that effect being said by Paul Baxendale Walker himself in Mark Daly’s documentary.
And as if by magic, here it is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80m7MV6xp-w
7 mins 40 secs to 9 mins 45 secs.
It’s all about buses with that mob…
Good morning from a cloudy but warm North Staffs
Congratulations to Minx and HT the CQN golden couple – have a great day and a long and happy life together
Auldheid
My boots can stand a good wedding no danger.
However, what they can’t necessarily stand is the strange coincidence of me standing at a bar with ACGR, who insists on buying spirits of high quality in large measure, only for Kickinthenakas to burst into song with each and every one of Frank Sintra’s top 100 tunes!
Yet it is my kinda town, Cumbernauld is ……… My kinda town.
Beat Bhoy
I doubt they can. I’d love half their energy.
BRTH
That goes into my growing list of Tims to avoid. :)
AULDHEID on 7TH JULY 2017 8:36 AM
Minty, and his media apologists, are anxious to put the blame on Paul Baxendale-Walker. No mention that the scheme was approved by Andrew Thornhill QC.
It was the side letters what done for them, a modification introduced by Minty when he took the administration of the scheme in house to avoid paying fees to external advisers.
Patullo’s article is a classic mix of ill thought through process and a lack of fact.
What kind of question is “what is to be achieved by stripping titles or even marking them with an asterisk?”
What was to be achieved by disqualifying Ben Johnson?
Can a riderless horse win a race?
If the ball is nearly in during a game of tennis — what is to be achieved by the linesman shouting “out” if the other guy wouldn’t have caught it anyway?
What is to be achieved by insisting a putt actually goes into the whole?
If the Putt doesn’t go in, or the ball is out then you don’t get the credit for the shot.
The question is did Rangers break the rules of football, not whether there is any point in punishing them for breaking the rules of football?
The man is stupid.
Ernie
Totally correct and you hit a nail on the head.
EBT’s were legal.
What is unlawful was the way Minty and his cohorts administered them and how they then treated the tax authorities.
How they treated the football rules and authorities was quite separately unlawful and against the rules and spirit of the game.
Davidopolous
Thank you so much.
That video should be essential watching for smsm journos.
Congrats to Minx1888 and Hamilton Tim ahead of their big day, today.
Two very special people.
The CQN Wedding of the Year. if not Decade
HH
CRC
Auldheid
It was a very enlightening exposé at the time – think how much deeper Mark Daly could go on the subject now!!!
BRHT – for me that is the point – title stripping is not my issue – getting universal acceptance that they broke the rules (cheated) is paramount
Anyone who does not get the moral obligation of righting the wrong is a Hun
67ECW
Through the EBT years, DEID Rangers won 14 trophies and titles. Along with the accolades and celebrations they also received prize money for each of their tainted successes. They have now in the highest court of the United Kingdom been damned as cheats, if not actual criminals, but that point is open to debate. However, the prize money they won (sic) by cheating the other Scottish clubs who competed against them should not be forgotten, it should be returned.
After all, the new Rangers signed up to the 5 way agreement and the repayment of ALL football related debts.
Get the money back from the ‘new’ rangers that the’old’ Rangers accrued through deceit and lies and perhaps donate it to deserving Scottish charities which are devoid of all bias.
Dons Supporters Together just tweeted that a steward at Arbroath asked them to take down their Regan and Doncaster Wanted banners yesterday as their (as in Aberdeen’s) chairman had asked him to take it away.
A note to any journalist who reads this – imagine if David Walsh Sunday Times said oh what’s to be gained by questioning and investigating Lance Armstrong !!!
So if you are a journalist working in Scotland and you see no reason to right the wrong that is Rangers cheating years – at best you are simply a useless journalist at worst you are a puppet for a corrupt football team
67ECW
THELURKINTIM
My age defying secret is to……..err, lie about my age!
Am only 68.
Hope you are well!