Contrary to our earlier understanding, Rangers did not win a ruling from the Court of Session on who was to be appointed administrator, HMRC and Rangers came to agreement on the appointment of Duff and Phelps, who acted for Whyte during his takeover of the club.
The admission by Duff and Phelps that today’s court action by HM Revenue and Customs was in connection to circa £9m unpaid tax accrued since the takeover in May last year will come as a surprise no one in the Celtic Quick News community. This is why Rangers are now in administration, it’s nothing to do with the big tax case, or indeed, the wee tax case.
Key question is, what will HMRC do now? They’re not going away/. Rangers continued to sign football players despite being delinquent with taxes, and briefed journalists that they rejected a £9m offer for a player on 31 August 2011.
The fact that the business is in administration due to activity carried out under Craig Whyte’s tenure may also interest the Insolvency Service, who are already investigating Whyte’s takeover of the club following information passed by former chairman, Alastair Johnston.
One final push (this week) for the Vanessa Riddle Appeal. We have a Celtic top signed by the first team squad available to auction on eBay. You can bid on the auction and help send Vanessa for the treatment she needs by clicking here. Thanks to Penfold for the donation and to Taggsybhoy for organising (yet again).
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This news just in mates…
Heart of Midlothian Football Club and Rangers Football Club are going to amalgamate and be known as Heart of Midlothian Rangers Club, or in its short form – HMRC
bhoys , is that a 29 points turnaround in 3 months?
reagan the sfa and spl have the folllowing questins to answer:
how long have they known about rangers problems
should they have taken action
who granted the licence, was this correct
what punishment do rangers get strippped of titles etc.
answers needed now
Craig Whyte’s masterplan explained.
‘Rangers in crisis: Jailed embezzler blows lid on the deals he used to help Craig Whyte beat the taxman
Feb 15 2012 By Mark McGivern
A JAILED embezzler has told how he helped beleaguered tycoon Craig Whyte sail from one bust company to another, leaving furious creditors out of pocket.
Kevin Sykes, who served an eight-year jail term for a £3million pension fund fraud, set up companies for Whyte to offload liabilities into.
The companies were used to take on liabilities to the taxman and other creditors before going bust, in deals he refers to as “the old switcheroo”.
Sykes, 51, said he never believed Whyte would pay HMRC a penny of the club’s debt should they lose a £49million tax case with Rangers, which could rise to £75million with penalties.
He said: “Let me tell you this, my money is on that not being paid.
“Hypothetically, there would probably be an old switcheroo and an insolvency.
“I guarantee that there are already some insolvency practitioners lined up, and a big firm of lawyers too.
“Somebody might say the intention was always to leave the revenue behind and that was the attraction.
“You could dump £49million of debt, hive the business up and have a new clean start and everybody is happy.
“You could have the assets out under value and there might be development opportunities around the site.
“I think that there will be a hive up to new owners and I think Whyte will do very well from the deal.
“I think it would be very strange for him to get involved if he didn’t think there was a deal to be had.
“The previous owner was probably a guy of good reputation who couldn’t afford to get his hands dirty. But what did Whyte have to lose?
“He has to act within the law and he will say he is acting in the best interests of Rangers.
“Nobody is going to mention the cost to the public purse and that the fans have really paid for it.
“I would have thought there is already somebody waiting in the wings to buy. That’s what would be my opinion, given that level of debt.”
Sykes said there would be no need for Rangers to change the club’s name. He said: “Whatever happens, they will apply under the Insolvency Act to continue using the same name, Rangers Football Club, without changing it.
“Because of the history of the club, they would get leave from the court to continue to use the name.
“There could be an arrangement whereby a lot of people don’t get paid, including the public purse, and the same people could be left running it.”
Sykes believes the next buyer of Rangers would be someone with an impeccable reputation.
He said: “They could possibly buy the club from Whyte free of debt and the old company could be buried
legitimately and their hands could be clean.
“The reality is often that the deal has been done before any formal insolvency dealings have taken place.
“Insolvency practitioners would never admit it on the record but the reality is that they pre-pack companies into administration and out again the same day every day of the week and the taxman gets left behind for millions or even billions of pounds – and that’s legalised cheating of the revenue.”
Sykes met Whyte in the early 1990s, when the pair were young wheeler dealers making their first millions.
They were introduced by Aidan Earley, the former bankrupt behind a “soccer academy” link-up between Rangers and tiny amateur football club Banstead Athletic, in Surrey, as revealed by the Record last week.
Earley’s late brother, Brendan, was Whyte’s right-hand man when the Rangers owner was given a seven-year ban from being a director in 2000.
Sykes said: “When I first met Craig, he was in Glasgow. We proposed the structure to him and he liked the idea of it and we set it up. We set it up through Brendan, the accountant.
“The liabilities would then be taken off balance sheets in special purpose companies in order that they wouldn’t bring his main trading operation down if there was any problem.
“So he was able to be selective in who he paid – and when.
“I’m told a lot of money went to different places and didn’t necessarily end up where it should have done.”
Sykes was secretary in companies – where Whyte was a director – which were dissolved in the late 1990s.
At least 24 companies were wound up while Whyte was a director.
Vital UK was the disastrous venture that led to Whyte’s seven-year ban from being a director.
They collapsed, owing creditors around £400,000, £33,000 in VAT and £280,000 in income tax.
When Vital UK were going bust, all of their assets were sold to a company called Pelcroft. They were immediately sold to another company, which then sold them to another firm.
Subsequent litigation by the liquidators of Vital UK managed to retrieve a large slice of the cash back from Pelcroft for creditors.
Whyte’s ban was handed down by registrar John Simmonds following a trial at the Royal Courts of Justice Companies Court in London in June 2000.
Registrar Simmonds ruled that “the assets of the company (Vital UK) were put out of reach of creditors”.
Despite evidence to the contrary, Whyte’s lawyers claimed he had never been a close business associate of Sykes, which he finds astonishing.
He said: “Considering I used to go out with him and his wife and my wife quite a lot then I would say that’s more than a fleeting acquaintance.
“But wouldn’t you want to play any association with me down?”
In 2008, Sykes and Simon Maya were ordered to pay back £1.5million from a £2.9million theft from a Birmingham company’s pension fund.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2012/02/15/rangers-in-crisis-jailed-embezzler-blows-lid-on-the-deals-he-used-to-help-craig-whyte-beat-the-taxman-86908-23749209/
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Nacho Novo got a New Tattoo..
Five Stars and a Asterix..
* Denotes 10 Point Deduction for Cheating..
Summa
Having visited a childrens hospice yesterday, the new tax revelations made me sick. Rangers total tax liability could fund a hospice for 10 years.
Disgusted
Willie McKay saying He’s looking to get Cousins into a team in England :) I Don’t think Birmingham will be one of them Willie, eh? Ya shyster.
morning all, what will today bring? :)
astounded that mp’s and msp’s are parroting the “poor rangers” line; they are tax evaders and cheats FFS, why are people so afraid of telling it as it is? CHEATING, not just in a football sense but cheating hospitals, schools, the armed forces which they profess to love so much. CHEATS, CHEATS, CHEATS!!!!
plus the silence from the SFA and SPL is deafening. Fit and proper? European licenses? How far does it go?
Despite being on the inside and seeing Whyte destroy the club he has ‘supported’ all his life on a daily basis, TFPLG is still encouraging the fans to turn up in their numbers and support the team
Somebody wouldn’t be in line for a nice wee bonus if everything goes to plan would they?
.
MurdochBhoy..
Well Said Buddi..
Summa
o o o o o o o o
=|=|=|=|=|=|=|=|
/\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
Anybody fancy doing the conga??
Didnt work out how it looked in a word doc… harrumph…
Of all the people interviewed and quoted about them and their situation, I have heard only one who has even suggested they may be guilty of wrong doing and he is Italian: Gabrielle Marcotti (I think). He was asked about their not , maybe, playing in Europe next season. He said that they had competed with an uneven advantage against European opposition and (possibly) in Scotland too. Needlesstosay, those were the last words of the interview.
Still, they are in a mess and in spite of continuing attempts to let them escape their responsiblities, it looks like HMRC will be hounding them to get as much of the money they are owed as possible.
So there you have it, The Daily Record, whose journalists mock Celtic fans and their twisted fantasies about Rangers, manage to get the truth at last from Sykes the conman.
Too late.
Yass
http://scotslawthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/what-will-the-administrators-of-rangers-football-club-plc-do/
A quick (ish) guide to what the administrators of Rangers have to do, and when. Will they honour season tickets? Why?
How many players will be made redundant – remember Motherwell got rid of 19.
How many “ordinary” staff members will go, to save the equivalent of one player’s wages?
– south side Tims celebrating in heaven last might
MWD
James Forrest – from last night.
If the Huns are going down the Leeds Utd route then expect to see some very unusual invoices from people close to or associated with Kraig Wite which defy all reason.
It is alleged (because it is true) that Bates did this to try and force through the CVA.
It turned out at the last minute that the club owed money to Yorkshire Radio (proprietor Bates) approx £1.5m IIRC for ermmmmm……not sure. It is normal that radio stations who have the rights to transmit games actually pay the club for the privilege. Not in this case where the opposite appeared to be the case.
I hope HMRC have learned the lesson of Leeds Utd (where they we owed ONLY £6m) and screw Wite to the floor.
I said this yesterday and I’ll say it again the biggest culprits in this fraud perpetrated on the tax-payer are the Rankers support
Through their ignorance,negligence,avarice, indifference,dishonesty and moral and ethical bankruptcy they allowed MY club to be cheated an defrauded other clubs to be pushed into risky business practices to try to stay afloat. The full extent of the damage inflicted on Scottish football has yet to be fully realised. And now the Media , Press and Establishment want my sympathy for the poor poor Rankers Support ……that’ll be shining bright……….they can ROT
Morning all,
Before the late STV news, i never (nor wanted) to find out which persuasion Archie McPherson leaned to.
After the programme, there was absoloutely no mistake!
Quite shocked by it actually, amazing how they all rally in the time of need
Hahaha Craig whyte has done a runner to monaco
Ernie:
I wish I could answer you but I can’t. Confusion reigns and I believe every ploy feasible to resurrect the huns is being forensically investigated and the rules are being meticulously dissected to see if even semantics could be their saviour. One thing I do know, if I was a Rangers supporter I doubt I’d want anything to do with a club that has been so exposed for cheating sport, integrity, the community, the country, morals, ethics and its purported loyalties. That club is forever tarred, tainted and indelibly tattooed in the history books as cheats. No amount of spin can ever remove that stain.
No matter how they recreate themselves – nothing will disguise their illicit past, not even the cremation of their history.
I’ve yet to hear an official admission of guilt far less an offer of apology to Scotland and all her citizens that they have cheated and shamed.
What an example, an education, a legacy, they continue to serve their people and others. There is something malevolent in the way they are being treated. They are not being ridiculed cheats as opposed being supported as victims.
Their actions were premeditated, calculated, surreptitious
and deliberately so. There is no hiding from that and if they are accepted straight back into the SPL – then hell mend those responsible.
blantyretim says:
15 February, 2012 at 08:02
Any time I start to feel a smidgin sorry for them,I remember
the Desmond White banner ,the ambulance chaser banner,
the big Jock chant ,the potato throwers and the Torbet song,
eff the lot of them.
Fergus… If whytes company is the prefered creditor…
What would stop his company (bearing in mind what they supposedly specialise in) from working on an advisory/ management basis in the last 8 months charging £2m per month for such services?
£24m ticketus
£9m paye/ vat=£33m
£18m secured investment
£16m consultancy charges= £34m
Big secured profit
Neil Doncaster declares that the rules will be followed.
I am not reassured by this.
There are iron rules and, as we know from experience, there are rules which have the characteristics of Playdoh.
Trust no one until they have earned it.
I am heartened by the concern shown for the workers in Ibrox who will lose their livelihood in the days and weeks to come. Great strides have been made since they all sat back and watched the Rangers Shop workers sacked when RFC sold the business to JJB. Today redundancies are disgraceful but back then it was part of another Murray masterstoke.
chick young on 5live. what an imbecile.
Is anyone getting this? There’s enough scope within the law for a company to go under, owing millions to HMRC, and new company to arise in its place, under the SAME NAME, debt free?
That’s not a loophole, it’s a flipping crater!
Forget the obvious moral implications (I know, how anti-enterprise of me); viewed at its most cynical, why isn’t there a law to plug such an open goal for crooks?
Went to Palmerston last night for a wee shot of LARF.
QOS were unlucky, Aberdeen were poor , although their support was in fine form and clearly are relishing recent events at Hector’s House.
Anyways, made me think this LARF might be the saving of Scottish football.
Without the pittance we get from TV we could go back to 3 o’clock kickoffs, have sensible pricing and bring back standing on some of the terraces, attendances could well go up.
What’s not to like?
Repost of James on nightshift
James Forrest is The Emperor of Ice Cream says:
15 February, 2012 at 00:52
Let me tell you all how I feel right now.
I actually thought I would feel overjoyed, delighted, thrilled that this had come to pass. But as the full extent of what has happened here becomes known, becomes clear, I am finding it impossible to retain even the smallest enthusiasm for the process past this point.
What I feel instead is sick, heart sick, and deep disgust that things got to this point.
Let me tell you, people will lose their jobs. Other clubs may go to the wall. Football in this country might very well die a death as slow and painful as any national sport has ever had visited on it, and you know what? Not one bit of it bothers me in the slightest.
What has happened already is an incalculable fraud on an epic scale. This is not simply the debts we know about, but the untraceable £50 million which vanished into the larger debt of MIH, the ENIC money, Dave King, all of it. It runs into the HUNDREDS of millions, sums so enormous it is impossible to contemplate it.
When you think about it, it helps to do it in the full context of what we’re talking about.
A bank which owned part of the club, as part of a dodgy bent deal with David Murray, allowed them to run up enormous debts. That assured they would never foreclose, no matter what. When the global financial crisis hit, and things began to spiral downward, £50 million of the club’s debt vanished into the black hole that was MIH. This is all fact, and it’s a known fact.
I mention Dave King very specifically. A man who has been found guilty of multiple tax fraud offences and will stand trial for racketeering and corruption in South Africa, a man who went to that country with an accounting degree and, who during global economic sanctions, made a fortune during apartheid. I’ve always argued that should have been looked at … but even now, with him GUILTY on many of the worst charges levelled against him, he is still deemed a “fit and proper person” by the SFA and SPL.
It makes me wonder just what it will take for someone NOT to be declared fit and proper.
David Murray set up a tax evasion scheme which, according to the RTC guy, everyone in the Ibrox boardroom was aware was not only potentially questionable but ILLEGAL … and we also suspect there were two contracts for the players which, presumably, either were never declared to the SFA or the SFA then decided to pass despite no proper scrutiny or alternative legal opinion.
We know – for a FACT – that the scheme was highly dubvious and alternative legal opinion would have indicated this. We know this because a Celtic director, Brian Quinn, who had just become chairman, instantly declared our own brief flirtation with it at an end. How hard did the SFA look for that kind of advice?
Then there is the media. Don’t even get me started on their role up to this point. Disgraceful.
All of this brings us to Craig Whyte, and the present set of circumstances. I won’t rehash them here, but only because I want to revisit them in my own way later.
Today’s news that the club has been trading whilst insolvent brings into disrepute every institution involved in the running of the Scottish game. They have not been asleep at the wheel as much as they have been lying behind it pissed, one foot on the accelarator and a bottle of whiskey between their legs.
Is the smug git Stewart Regan STILL sure Rangers should have been granted a license to play in Europe? Will that question arise over the next few days? It should. Many questions should be asked.
Yesterday they paraded a new signing. The SPL is debating whether to register him! That is SCANDALOUS when things stand as they are. He should be on the next plane home, and that should only be the START of the sanctions. For LYING to the league authorities relegation should be AUTOMATIC.
The scale of this is enormous. The Scottish and British tax payers stand ready to be defrauded out of tens of millions, perhaps more, if Craig Whyte gets his way. If this was any other BUSINESS in the country the media would be crucifying him, the world would be condemning it. In Scotland we have Members of Parliament, and Margaret Curran is the latest, a woman I respect enormously, but not today … SHAME ON YOU FOR WHAT YOU SAID EARLIER ….. actually suggesting Scottish football, and society, needs this organisation.
NO WE DO NOT. NOT NOW. NOT EVER.
They are a disgrace. Their conduct is a disgrace. And every person who wants them cut slack – ANY SLACK – is now making excuses for sheer, blatant criminality.
Shame. Shame on all of them. I consider them accomplises after the fact now.
share
kitalba
if I was a Rangers supporter I doubt I’d want anything to do with a club that has been so exposed for cheating sport, integrity, the community, the country, morals, ethics and its purported loyalties.
Loving the intentional oxymoron.
Somebody waiting in the wings to buy…………. Ellis?
Unfortunately I was having something to eat last night when ‘Mark Dingwall’ appeared on the screen.
The TV should have warned us, or put a paper bag over his head.
If they really are the ‘People’ they need to keep their genes to themselves.
MD is the poster boy for Bitter Blubber.
Apologies ,just saw jackie mac already posted .
angelfc67: 15 February, 2012 at 08:33
Whooft is a massive Hun.
Top of the morning to the Celtic family all over this beautiful world!
It is shameful that the ordinary workers at the House of Satan find their futures jeopardized by this crook (there, I’ve said it). Those people have my sympathy.
It will be very interesting at Greyskull this Saturday.
I predict a riot.
I have no sympathy for the hun followers. They sleepwalked into this mess by dint of their innate arrogance. Well, I am sorry Huns – your whole ethos has been exposed as nothing but a lie.
It turns out that WE are the people and we did not surrender when we faced similar problems. We rebelled, that’s our ethos.
Hail and hail!
Like that other Harland and Wolff creation, the ‘unsinkable’ Titanic, maybe the unsinkable SS Dignity is being sunk by an iceberg of debt, only 1/8 of which is visible above the surface.
ernie lynch says:
15 February, 2012 at 08:12
Exactly what I’ve been thinking all along.
It stinks and many knew about it !
Surely if this has all been pre planned by a man with history then surely ! Surely ! There must be something the government can do?
Its like…. Oh dear a big scam .. It’s rangers !so…… It’s okay!
Victory
One thing that seems to have slid under the radar is that David Murray lied about finding a new owner.
His ridiculous “I looked across the table into his eyes” and didn’t think the deal was the beat for Huns can’t be true.
Johnstone came out the other day and said no one thought the club would be sold and Whyte come out of nowhere. No mention of other potential buyers.
Also at this time. Any wannabe Hun owner would have come out now and said I tried to buy the club.
I wonder what will come out day? Every day’s like Xmas.