Duff and Duffer trial

Sick of hearing the 100m figure trotted out all the time. The debt was never that high.
I think the debt, in terms of the Admin at least, was accepted at circa £94m or so. Since reduced substantially due to the efforts of BDO. I think to £60m+ - and they are still seeking to reduce it further with HMRC.

The only 'debt' that will come close to £100m will be the compensation that the various Scottish agencies will have to pay out due to the clusterf*ck they made of the investigation and subsequent prosecutions.
 
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This is not going away is it. Yet more suing and counter suing all because the baying mob want to get one over Rangers.

I am calculating that this all could cost the taxpayer (us) around £250M and for what?
 
Does anyone have an accurate summary and timeline or a link to the events/payouts save me going through 6 pages and reading all the articles.

Looking to fire off an email to my MP, make her work for her money.
 
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Yet idiots vote for the snp.
 
I will never believe the Police and Crown went after them for the benefit of us. I think it was more get them up on charges and punish us in terms trying to reverse everything they done to fk us over. Nothing in this country is done to benefit Rangers.
 

The Times. Thursday, 7th October 2021.​


HMRC official wanted to give oldco Rangers time to pay​


Rangers could have better handled its flagging fortunes with more time, according to one HMRC official

Rangers could have better handled its flagging fortunes with more time, according to one HMRC official.
CRAIG FOY/SNS GROUP

A senior HMRC official suggested tax authorities should give Rangers FC more time to pay back its debt but his proposal was voted down by executives, new documents reveal.

Des Dolan, part of the revenue’s debt management and banking directorate, made representations to the highest level of the organisation as officers in his division favoured supporting a company voluntary arrangement (CVA). A CVA works either by giving a longer time period for a company to pay its debt or by creditors accepting they will receive a lower amount.

HMRC’s traditional position had been to vote against the CVA of a business when it came to such situations.

A judgment by Lord Tyre, in a case where BDO, the liquidator of RFC 2012, or oldco Rangers, pursued the former administrators of Rangers for compensation, reveals there was conflict in the authority about what to do.

Dolan is said to have presented a case during a meeting with some of HMRC’s executive committee and argued the CVA “would produce a better recovery” for the agency.

Mike Baird, the head of the finance professionals unit in HMRC’s specialist investigations directorate, argued the CVA should be rejected and a voluntary liquidation sought instead. He felt that would have maximised recovery and allowed an investigation to take place.

As the largest creditor, HMRC voting against the CVA meant it could not succeed. That resulted in the assets of RFC 2012 being sold to Charles Green’s Sevco consortium for £5.5 million.

HMRC said: “We can’t comment on identifiable businesses.”

What has happened?
Lord Tyre has ruled Paul Clark and David Whitehouse, the former administrators of Rangers FC, could have done more to bring in money for creditors of the Ibrox club back in 2012. He has awarded BDO, the liquidator of RFC 2012, £3.4 million plus interest.

Why does this matter?

It will again raise questions about how the administration and financial collapse of Rangers was handled. It also gives BDO additional money potentially to pay creditors.

What happens next?

Unless there is an appeal by either side the decision will stand and the money will need to be paid. It is up to BDO to decide how the cash is used.
 
Above… Mike Baird made one monumental financial f*ck up with his decision… cost the tax payer more multi millions than trying to bring Rangers down… he should be dragged over the coals also.
 
Des Dolan was in favour of allowing the debt to be paid off over a longer period. Des Dolan will be getting investigated by the Green Brigade.
 
did hmrc have enough of the debt to deny a cva.not the over inflated debt but the real debt.also did hmrc allow white to run up all sorts of non payment to them before calling him in for it.if so did this result in rangers owing even more money to hmrc helping them to deny a cva..maybe old co can take hmrc to court for damages.
 
did hmrc have enough of the debt to deny a cva.not the over inflated debt but the real debt.also did hmrc allow white to run up all sorts of non payment to them before calling him in for it.if so did this result in rangers owing even more money to hmrc helping them to deny a cva..maybe old co can take hmrc to court for damages.
There were two separate issues

The big tax case and the small tax case.

It was the small tax case and Whyte withholding Paye that forced the issue.

I’ll stand corrected if Im wrong but thats how I remember it.
 
did hmrc have enough of the debt to deny a cva.not the over inflated debt but the real debt.also did hmrc allow white to run up all sorts of non payment to them before calling him in for it.if so did this result in rangers owing even more money to hmrc helping them to deny a cva..maybe old co can take hmrc to court for damages.
I'm pretty sure they did mate. Without the Big Tax Case they still had over £15m of the debt for the Wee Tax Case, unpaid PAYE and an an Inheritance Tax item as at the last report in Dec 2020. That's come down from over £20m, presumably through BDO negotiations with HMRC. The £74m HMRC were claiming for the Big Tax Case has also been negotiated down by many millions. Even with the Big Tax Case taken out in its entirety that probably still gave them the 25% of the remaining debt they needed to veto. Though I'd have to go back and do some number-crunching to be certain. Some details in this link to the last Creditors Report. All previous Reports to Creditors can be found on the BDO website.

 
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For me this whole mess primarily sits at the door of HMRC, this tax case farce has achieved absolutely nothing and in the end and left them and the public purse out of pocket.

Millions spent on court cases, Whyte withholding £9.5m and the money they are alleged to have turned down to settle the case originally all gone just for them to walk away with a few pence in the pound after over a decade.

The excuse that they pursued Rangers so that they could go after other clubs and companies has been shot to bits as well, in 3 years we've seen zero from them on that front.

They settled with Arsenal over EBT use years before our case as well but told Rangers they don't do deals?

The whole thing was nothing more than a total farce and the stupid amounts being paid out in compensation to the people at Duffy and Duffer is the icing on top of the cake.
That's saying nothing of the fact they retrospectively changed the tax law.
 
There were two separate issues

The big tax case and the small tax case.

It was the small tax case and Whyte withholding Paye that forced the issue.

I’ll stand corrected if Im wrong but thats how I remember it.
The small tax case with Whyte didn't warrant immediate action by HMRC though, it was a recent debt.
 
The small tax case with Whyte didn't warrant immediate action by HMRC though, it was a recent debt.
The wee tax case was, from memory, circa £3m, so small in the grand scheme of things. It also went back further than the EBTs. The bigger, immediate, issue was Whyte‘s deliberate withholding of PAYE. That was virtually inviting HMRC to take action. He’d have been as well standing at the doors of Ibrox, waving a flag and inviting them it. Complete headcase of a man. His ‘strategy’ made no sense whatsoever.
 
The wee tax case was, from memory, circa £3m, so small in the grand scheme of things. It also went back further than the EBTs. The bigger, immediate, issue was Whyte‘s deliberate withholding of PAYE. That was virtually inviting HMRC to take action. He’d have been as well standing at the doors of Ibrox, waving a flag and inviting them it. Complete headcase of a man. His ‘strategy’ made no sense whatsoever.
It made complete sense to him, he was inviting administration.
HMRC were also content to let the PAYE and NI debt run up so that could veto any CVA.
HMRC were taking out interdicts (or whatever) against Hearts when tax debts reached £500,000. They let Rangers run up more than £10M before mentioning it.
Whyte's initial intention was to shed the debt through admin then sell Rangers as a viable company even with the Ticketus debt.
Then the rest of the predators stiffed him, and proceeded to milk the club for £70m over 4 years.
All imo.
 
The wee tax case was, from memory, circa £3m, so small in the grand scheme of things. It also went back further than the EBTs. The bigger, immediate, issue was Whyte‘s deliberate withholding of PAYE. That was virtually inviting HMRC to take action. He’d have been as well standing at the doors of Ibrox, waving a flag and inviting them it. Complete headcase of a man. His ‘strategy’ made no sense whatsoever.
Always confused by his lack of strategy, and by the lack of a Floating Charge. With a FC he could have done a pre pack and defeated the Crown. But then again he would have needed to have invested some of his off the scale wealth.
 
The wee tax case was, from memory, circa £3m, so small in the grand scheme of things. It also went back further than the EBTs. The bigger, immediate, issue was Whyte‘s deliberate withholding of PAYE. That was virtually inviting HMRC to take action. He’d have been as well standing at the doors of Ibrox, waving a flag and inviting them it. Complete headcase of a man. His ‘strategy’ made no sense whatsoever.
His strategy made perfect sense to him. Distress the company, send it in to liquidation and probably then try to gain certain assets through a shell company he has control of but can't be linked to the Tickets debt. Whyte knew exactly what he was doing.
 
His strategy made perfect sense to him. Distress the company, send it in to liquidation and probably then try to gain certain assets through a shell company he has control of but can't be linked to the Tickets debt. Whyte knew exactly what he was doing.
Didn't that require the floating charge and the pre-pack admin though?
 
It made complete sense to him, he was inviting administration.
HMRC were also content to let the PAYE and NI debt run up so that could veto any CVA.
HMRC were taking out interdicts (or whatever) against Hearts when tax debts reached £500,000. They let Rangers run up more than £10M before mentioning it.
Whyte's initial intention was to shed the debt through admin then sell Rangers as a viable company even with the Ticketus debt.
Then the rest of the predators stiffed him, and proceeded to milk the club for £70m over 4 years.
All imo.
Good post mate but the Q re. Craig Whyte is he was the front who was the orchestrator

Murray ? Ashley ?
 
Without knowing all the facts, but given Whyte's practice before & since 2012, it's not unreasonable to speculate he wanted to put RFC's assets beyond Ticitus' reach when (inevitably) his wrongful purchase of the Club using future revenue came to light. Was it AJ or Bain said the only time he looked phased was when it seemed HMRC may appoint administrators? Whyte needed to control administration.
 
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From what I remember it was a Police Scotland balls up, the crown had the charges and the warrants but when PS went down south the grabbed everything instead of just evidence relating to Rangers. As a result the defence lawyer rightly argued all the evidence was inadmissible as it had been gathered outside scope of warrant. This meant the case collapsed with no evidence. However, I don’t see how it could be described as a malicious prosecution.
 
Seems like the sinister attempt to destroy Rangers has made some dodgy characters multi millionaires, enabled celtic to amass a load of trophies including a league championship even though they didn't really win it has gone awry and not one person in Scotland who was behind this atrocity will ever be brought to justice.
 
The small tax case with Whyte didn't warrant immediate action by HMRC though, it was a recent debt.
It was 12 months without paying PAYE and other taxes that were due.
You and I would not get away with that.
I suspect that Shyte was given numerous opportunities to fork out what was owed and didn’t pay up after making a shed load of excuses!!
 
Seems like the sinister attempt to destroy Rangers has made some dodgy characters multi millionaires, enabled celtic to amass a load of trophies including a league championship even though they didn't really win it has gone awry and not one person in Scotland who was behind this atrocity will ever be brought to justice.
Even worse, the Crown lawyers made a ‘political’ decision to say that these were malicious prosecutions so that the public purse could be robbed to pay the damages.
If this had been in England, there would be moves to sue the Crown lawyers individually for their negligence in the handling of the actions.
Normally, in cases like this, it would be civil actions and the damages claims would be against the insurance of the legal professionals involved.

But we could not possibly have that happening in Scotland as these top lawyers have kept the SNP in power and continue to do so.

Whoever came up with the idea of accepting that the Crown’s actions were malicious prosecutions, should be heading to jail
 
Even worse, the Crown lawyers made a ‘political’ decision to say that these were malicious prosecutions so that the public purse could be robbed to pay the damages.
If this had been in England, there would be moves to sue the Crown lawyers individually for their negligence in the handling of the actions.
Normally, in cases like this, it would be civil actions and the damages claims would be against the insurance of the legal professionals involved.

But we could not possibly have that happening in Scotland as these top lawyers have kept the SNP in power and continue to do so.

Whoever came up with the idea of accepting that the Crown’s actions were malicious prosecutions, should be heading to jail
Is that the 'Frank Mulholland' influence?
 
From what I remember it was a Police Scotland balls up, the crown had the charges and the warrants but when PS went down south the grabbed everything instead of just evidence relating to Rangers. As a result the defence lawyer rightly argued all the evidence was inadmissible as it had been gathered outside scope of warrant. This meant the case collapsed with no evidence. However, I don’t see how it could be described as a malicious prosecution.
Because the crown office decides based on evidence presented to them by cops whether to
Prosecute. The evidence was flakey ergo decision to prosecute not based on evidence = malicious.
 
From what I remember it was a Police Scotland balls up, the crown had the charges and the warrants but when PS went down south the grabbed everything instead of just evidence relating to Rangers. As a result the defence lawyer rightly argued all the evidence was inadmissible as it had been gathered outside scope of warrant. This meant the case collapsed with no evidence. However, I don’t see how it could be described as a malicious prosecution.

I was at the pre-hearing that was held in Aberdeen when that particular matter first surfaced. My understanding though was that when the cops went into the relevant office down south to search for the relevant evidence they discovered that one of the individuals concerned had taken it out of the office and was holding it at his home. Instead of the cops then seeking a further warrant to take it from the individual's home they went in without one, took the evidence and it was subsequently deemed inadmissible because it had been obtained illegally.
 
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