Professor Brian Howieson's book on the Rangers administration events

They did deals with other clubs who used them. Maybe Minty fighting them on it wasn't the best idea, but you have to remember if we are being told that it was kosher by lawyers at the time then why would you admit liability.

He offered them £12m to settle it and they refused so we went throught the process of disputing it all.

Regardless of Murray's fault in it, we've had a lot of the penalties etc wiped out by BDO fighting it even after the Supreme Court decision. HMRC wasted all this public money going after us because they said they wanted to use it as a 'test case'. Have they gone after any other club or any other company - Have they buggery.

HMRC were give a sum of almost £95m to vote against our CVA with. That in itself was an utter scandal. The FTT at the time hadn't even ruled and they were given a figure as if they'd won the damn thing.

Minty was an arsehole who thought he knew better than everyone else and who had a reputation of screwing people he did business with. He loved a deal and the EBT wheeze was right up his alley. I'm not sure they came after us because we were Rangers. They may have done it because it was Murray.
 
Everyone with a grudge (sectarian, cultural, political, sporting) put the boot into Rangers.
However, Murray made us vulnerable and certain influential people then teed us up, and if we are to believe, The Inland Revenue were encouraged to use us as a test case against a huge tax avoidance scheme used around the nation and especially in the City of London.

Has anyone investigated or written about how after eviscerating Rangers with a totally exaggerated tax bill, how HMRC with lessons learned successfully recovered billions back into the economy from other bigger and more significant users of these schemes?

One thing we as a support and a community should retain from this experience, is that the hatred is still out there and we are very much still a target of it.

Never forgive and most of all, never forget!
I’m more of a “Never forget and most of all, never forgive” man myself, Bilko.
 
They did deals with other clubs who used them. Maybe Minty fighting them on it wasn't the best idea, but you have to remember if we are being told that it was kosher by lawyers at the time then why would you admit liability.

He offered them £12m to settle it and they refused so we went throught the process of disputing it all.

Regardless of Murray's fault in it, we've had a lot of the penalties etc wiped out by BDO fighting it even after the Supreme Court decision. HMRC wasted all this public money going after us because they said they wanted to use it as a 'test case'. Have they gone after any other club or any other company - Have they buggery.

HMRC were give a sum of almost £95m to vote against our CVA with. That in itself was an utter scandal. The FTT at the time hadn't even ruled and they were given a figure as if they'd won the damn thing.

When did he offer them money to settle? So, he simultaneously offered to settle and disputed he owed anything (bear in mind it was MIH that ran the scheme, not Rangers)? Sounds like more moonbeams, tbh.

He was that confident of success he flogged the whole thing for a £1 to Craig Whyte. That was the level of confidence he had that he hadn't fucked up.
 
They did deals with other clubs who used them. Maybe Minty fighting them on it wasn't the best idea, but you have to remember if we are being told that it was kosher by lawyers at the time then why would you admit liability.

He offered them £12m to settle it and they refused so we went throught the process of disputing it all.

Regardless of Murray's fault in it, we've had a lot of the penalties etc wiped out by BDO fighting it even after the Supreme Court decision. HMRC wasted all this public money going after us because they said they wanted to use it as a 'test case'. Have they gone after any other club or any other company - Have they buggery.

HMRC were give a sum of almost £95m to vote against our CVA with. That in itself was an utter scandal. The FTT at the time hadn't even ruled and they were given a figure as if they'd won the damn thing.
Murray used EBTs far more than any other company, because his arrogance clouded his judgement. A disaster of epic proportions, the EBT potential bill, meant only a fool or a crook would take us over. The crook won and were still paying to this day.
 
HMRC were after us from the day we said we were using EBTs. It's a myth that Reid etc encouraged them to go after us over this. Every year we had to qualify our accounts re EBTS as we were targeted by them.
There is no doubt SPL and SFA could have helped us, but Lawwell did an amazing hatchet job in getting everyone against us, but if Murray wasn't so arrogant, he'd have shelved the EBTs after 3 or 4 years and settled with HMRC.
All this to save £22m approx in NI and tax.
Yes, fair enough, but these schemes were widely used by more powerful financial organisations than Rangers.
So what about the other outcomes?
My question still requires an answer.
 
Read an article on this yesterday.
Apparently he's a Falkirk fan who decided to do a neutral take on things.
Might be worth a read but it's too early for me, maybe 30 years time when I'm in ma 70s.
 
Fair play to the gentleman for putting this together. But in all honesty, he's only concluded what anyone with a bit of time and no agenda could conclude. Half a dozen Google searches will tell you what we already know. Any other hypothesis or theory is best left to moon howlers.
 
When did he offer them money to settle? So, he simultaneously offered to settle and disputed he owed anything (bear in mind it was MIH that ran the scheme, not Rangers)? Sounds like more moonbeams, tbh.

He was that confident of success he flogged the whole thing for a £1 to Craig Whyte. That was the level of confidence he had that he hadn't fucked up.
Obviously he didn't do it simultaniously, He offered them the £12m trying to do a deal as they werre demanding £30m, HMRC refused so we went down the road of disputing it. HMRC saw that we were using MIH's scheme so came after us as well.

The reason he sold us for £1 came out in the court case against Whyte, in order that he'd be able to keep his other companies. Rangers were used as leverage against him and he selfishly chose his own businesses.

I'm not defending Murray in any of these posts, what I'm getting at is how HMRC acted in all of this. I think the only words of truth that ever came out of Whyte's mouth was that HMRC had told him they were going to appeal, appeal and appeal again until they got what they wanted. That's what they did. Where has is got them? Wasted a sh!t ton of public money to end up getting buttons in the end.
 
Murray used EBTs far more than any other company, because his arrogance clouded his judgement. A disaster of epic proportions, the EBT potential bill, meant only a fool or a crook would take us over. The crook won and were still paying to this day.
And that's fine but it means bugger all. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's easy to say ach he shouldn't have done it. But he did do it and it cost us.

What I'm saying is that for all the BS we were told about 'Test Cases' and HMRC's insistance on taking things the whole hog when it was blatantly obvious that the Taxpayer - who they have a duty to protect was going to be the ultimate loser in all of this. Why did they act the way they did because it certainly wasn't in the public interest.
 
HMRC were after us from the day we said we were using EBTs. It's a myth that Reid etc encouraged them to go after us over this. Every year we had to qualify our accounts re EBTS as we were targeted by them.
There is no doubt SPL and SFA could have helped us, but Lawwell did an amazing hatchet job in getting everyone against us, but if Murray wasn't so arrogant, he'd have shelved the EBTs after 3 or 4 years and settled with HMRC.
All this to save £22m approx in NI and tax.
One other small point.
No one has ever explained what Reid meant when he told people that they were going to nail Rangers to the floor.
What could this mean?
They were going to sign a team to make us second-best for the foreseeable?
They had a manager in line who would reign supreme through his genius?

Somehow I don't think this was ever a phrase supported by sporting intentions.
So, what did it mean and why did he feel confident to voice it?
 
And that's fine but it means bugger all. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and it's easy to say ach he shouldn't have done it. But he did do it and it cost us.

What I'm saying is that for all the BS we were told about 'Test Cases' and HMRC's insistance on taking things the whole hog when it was blatantly obvious that the Taxpayer - who they have a duty to protect was going to be the ultimate loser in all of this. Why did they act the way they did because it certainly wasn't in the public interest.

Public interest is a nebulous concept. Did they want to create a legal precedent? Was it Celtic fans in high places? Was it someone who hated Murray? Did they do it for the PR of going after tax avoiders?

What did HMRC get out of it? Probably not very much. What did it cost them? In the grand scheme of things, not very much. But in terms of HMRC's overall operation, it was all buttons (or not material as we auditors might say).

The problem is that we - or rather Murray - gave them the opportunity to do it in the first place.
 
Obviously he didn't do it simultaniously, He offered them the £12m trying to do a deal as they werre demanding £30m, HMRC refused so we went down the road of disputing it. HMRC saw that we were using MIH's scheme so came after us as well.

The reason he sold us for £1 came out in the court case against Whyte, in order that he'd be able to keep his other companies. Rangers were used as leverage against him and he selfishly chose his own businesses.

I'm not defending Murray in any of these posts, what I'm getting at is how HMRC acted in all of this. I think the only words of truth that ever came out of Whyte's mouth was that HMRC had told him they were going to appeal, appeal and appeal again until they got what they wanted. That's what they did. Where has is got them? Wasted a sh!t ton of public money to end up getting buttons in the end.

When did he offer them £12m?
 
Obviously he didn't do it simultaniously, He offered them the £12m trying to do a deal as they werre demanding £30m, HMRC refused so we went down the road of disputing it. HMRC saw that we were using MIH's scheme so came after us as well.

The reason he sold us for £1 came out in the court case against Whyte, in order that he'd be able to keep his other companies. Rangers were used as leverage against him and he selfishly chose his own businesses.

I'm not defending Murray in any of these posts, what I'm getting at is how HMRC acted in all of this. I think the only words of truth that ever came out of Whyte's mouth was that HMRC had told him they were going to appeal, appeal and appeal again until they got what they wanted. That's what they did. Where has is got them? Wasted a sh!t ton of public money to end up getting buttons in the end.

This is also my take on what happened. HMRC were going to pursue us to the ends of the Earth until they got what they wanted. They had unlimited funds to hound us, and that's what they did. HMRC had no intention of agreeing and accepting a sum which suited both them and Rangers. Even when they lost the first two cases, they were determined to take it to the Court of Session in Edinburgh, and then the Supreme Court. It was driven by sectarianism in Scotland and political hatred elsewhere. HMRC came to an amicable agreement with Arsenal on similar tax issues, but not us, which said it all.
 
I think there is too much focus on HMRC here. The reality is that HMRC were able to do what they did because of Murray and his EBT wheeze. If you don't want to get on the wrong side of the taxman, then don't offer them an open goal.

Murray's game - pre 2008 when the shit hit the fan - was obvious to anyone who wanted to look. The level of risk he was carrying was well documented on here and was probably well known elsewhere. The reality is that nobody wanted to know. Not the mhedia, not the politicians, not the SFA and not the SPL.

After the shit hit the fan, the hunt was on for a scapegoat and the Club, not the company and not Murray, was that scapegoat. Or to put it another way, they all fecked up and gave us, the support, a good kicking.

Not much we can do about HMRC but we should never forget - not forgive - the role of the mhedia, the footballing authorities or, for that matter, the other clubs. They hate us, they will always hate us and we forget that at our peril.
 
It looks like an interesting and balanced book. Certainly worth approaching with an open mind.

One thing I take issue with is that some Rangers fans weren't sounding the alarm bell over MIH. We absolutely were, including me. Hopefully, those of us on FF who were around at the time will remember.

The problem was that no-one was listening as the MIH commercial property juggernaut rolled on towards disaster.
Unless I've misinterpreted your comment, I think that's fair. A lot of fans at the time or certainly in the years leading up to 2012, didn't really care about MIH. From interacting with different fans over the years I'd say the vast majority on here have far better knowledge about what is going on in and around the club. Therefore, it's not surprising that there was a fair bit of MIH chat on here at the time.
However, it's a moot point as you point out that no one was listening and not just to us. The SFA and SPFL are every bit as culpable as Murray IMO.
It wasn't a case of case of they didn't listen. They didn't care, they were at best negligent, at worst in cahoots with Whyte. They were warned by Gordon Smith and others about what Whyte was up to and that he was not a fit and proper person, yet they refused to sanction CW then.
 
Absolutely spot on with Murray. Indeed in addition to using Club to help his own business (steel for club deck etc) he also absolutely used it to grow his personal wealth. Primarily through “friendships” with selected agents.
Murray used the club as a vehicle to prop his own businesses up. As much as his hubris and spending made the club successful on the park by making huge signings, as well as Walter of course, he also started his own downfall by believe his own hype.

The club had been threatening financial trouble as far back as 2005-6, teetering on the brink of administration and that very idea was mooted by Murray and his board but were thankfully talked out of it. He wasted so many millions of pound investment by ENIC and Dave King among others, and had nowhere else to turn. Come 2008 he was in trouble with the financial crash starting. Murray, in the end, was just as big a conman as the little scum prick he gave the club too, masqueraded as a genuine sale.

Murray can never be forgiven for his part, ever. He caused it, Whyte just made it worse.
 
When did he offer them £12m?
When they first sent us the initial bill.

With all due respect, I'm not willing to cop a ban here, arguing with an Admin about something that has been universally accepted on here over a decade ago.

I get that Murray is the absolute Antichrist to some on here, and he took massive risks with the club which he shouldn't have. Is he culpable? Absolutely! My posts this afternoon have been questioning HMRC and how they acted towards us when they had done deals with not only other football clubs but major companies who were ripping the absolute piss when it came to Tax Avoidance but went after us like a dug with a bone.
 
When they first sent us the initial bill.

With all due respect, I'm not willing to cop a ban here, arguing with an Admin about something that has been universally accepted on here over a decade ago.

I get that Murray is the absolute Antichrist to some on here, and he took massive risks with the club which he shouldn't have. Is he culpable? Absolutely! My posts this afternoon have been questioning HMRC and how they acted towards us when they had done deals with not only other football clubs but major companies who were ripping the absolute piss when it came to Tax Avoidance but went after us like a dug with a bone.

You won't cop a ban. We received the HMRC bill in 2010. The club was already being run by Lloyds man Donald Muir - a fact people forget is that Lloyds also wanted money having been forced to take on Murray's crumbling empire after the 2008 crash. So where exactly is Murray pulling £12m from in the spring of 2010? We went two years without even buying a player at this time.

I am highly sceptical of any claim that Murray made any attempt to resolve the HMRC issue. You also need to consider that Murray made enemies on the way up that he encountered on the way back down.
 
You won't cop a ban. We received the HMRC bill in 2010. The club was already being run by Lloyds man Donald Muir - a fact people forget is that Lloyds also wanted money having been forced to take on Murray's crumbling empire after the 2008 crash. So where exactly is Murray pulling £12m from in the spring of 2010? We went two years without even buying a player at this time.

I am highly sceptical of any claim that Murray made any attempt to resolve the HMRC issue. You also need to consider that Murray made enemies on the way up that he encountered on the way back down.
2010, according to this article, from 2012, is when Murray offered to settle at circa £10m.


He said: "Two years ago, almost to the week, Mike McGill – who is, and continues to be, the group finance director for Murray International Holdings – met in London the permanent secretary for tax at HMRC and at that time sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.
 
2010, according to this article, from 2012, is when Murray offered to settle at circa £10m.


He said: "Two years ago, almost to the week, Mike McGill – who is, and continues to be, the group finance director for Murray International Holdings – met in London the permanent secretary for tax at HMRC and at that time sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.
The source added that there was a feeling among those at Murray International Holdings, including Sir David, that the lengthy legal battle could have been avoided if HMRC had been willing to settle earlier, when the company offered a compromise agreement of £10.5m.

He said: "Two years ago, almost to the week, Mike McGill – who is, and continues to be, the group finance director for Murray International Holdings – met in London the permanent secretary for tax at HMRC and at that time sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.

"When you see the comprehensive manner of the tribunal's judgment, it's difficult to understand exactly why they've chosen to pursue this particular case with such vigour and aggressiveness, particularly when the company was two years ago trying to reach a reasonable settlement."


I'd wager "the source" was David Murray or someone very close to him.
 
2010, according to this article, from 2012, is when Murray offered to settle at circa £10m.


He said: "Two years ago, almost to the week, Mike McGill – who is, and continues to be, the group finance director for Murray International Holdings – met in London the permanent secretary for tax at HMRC and at that time sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.

There's no figure quoted in the article. All we have is Murray's claim that one of his dogsbodies met with HMRC in November 2010 to try and stop it going any further. Maybe he offered them £1.

EDIT - My mistake re figure being quoted in article.
 
2010, according to this article, from 2012, is when Murray offered to settle at circa £10m.


He said: "Two years ago, almost to the week, Mike McGill – who is, and continues to be, the group finance director for Murray International Holdings – met in London the permanent secretary for tax at HMRC and at that time sought to reach an out-of-court settlement.

I wonder if there's a bit of the old Murray PR/smoke and mirrors with this - eg was that an offer for the entirety of the MIH EBT bill rather than just the Rangers oldco liability?
 
HMRC were after us from the day we said we were using EBTs. It's a myth that Reid etc encouraged them to go after us over this. Every year we had to qualify our accounts re EBTS as we were targeted by them.
There is no doubt SPL and SFA could have helped us, but Lawwell did an amazing hatchet job in getting everyone against us, but if Murray wasn't so arrogant, he'd have shelved the EBTs after 3 or 4 years and settled with HMRC.
All this to save £22m approx in NI and tax.
Arsenal had ebts as well and used them more than us how on earth then did they manage to avoid the shit we encountered,you can believe what you want mate me I think John fukin Reid was up to his back teeth hatred towards our club and as Home Secretary he certainly could have made sure hmrc went after us.
 
I think there is too much focus on HMRC here. The reality is that HMRC were able to do what they did because of Murray and his EBT wheeze. If you don't want to get on the wrong side of the taxman, then don't offer them an open goal.

Murray's game - pre 2008 when the shit hit the fan - was obvious to anyone who wanted to look. The level of risk he was carrying was well documented on here and was probably well known elsewhere. The reality is that nobody wanted to know. Not the mhedia, not the politicians, not the SFA and not the SPL.

After the shit hit the fan, the hunt was on for a scapegoat and the Club, not the company and not Murray, was that scapegoat. Or to put it another way, they all fecked up and gave us, the support, a good kicking.

Not much we can do about HMRC but we should never forget - not forgive - the role of the mhedia, the footballing authorities or, for that matter, the other clubs. They hate us, they will always hate us and we forget that at our peril.

I'd disagree somewhat as some of HMRC's actions in this whole case were scandalous.

Allowing mountains of stolen documents to get into the hands of yahoo bloggers. Also constant leaks from staff working for them about the case.

Cutting deals for much less money than owed to them by clubs like Hearts, Newcastle and Arsenal who were using similar loopholes around the same period.

Allowing Whyte to run up nine months of non-payment of tax while issuing Hearts with a winding up order after 30 days. Had they acted much earlier a lot of this might have been avoided.
 
Obviously he didn't do it simultaniously, He offered them the £12m trying to do a deal as they werre demanding £30m, HMRC refused so we went down the road of disputing it. HMRC saw that we were using MIH's scheme so came after us as well.

The reason he sold us for £1 came out in the court case against Whyte, in order that he'd be able to keep his other companies. Rangers were used as leverage against him and he selfishly chose his own businesses.

I'm not defending Murray in any of these posts, what I'm getting at is how HMRC acted in all of this. I think the only words of truth that ever came out of Whyte's mouth was that HMRC had told him they were going to appeal, appeal and appeal again until they got what they wanted. That's what they did. Where has is got them? Wasted a sh!t ton of public money to end up getting buttons in the end.

They refused because if he could have settled it when it was affordable but fines kept adding up to it was to late
 
You won't cop a ban. We received the HMRC bill in 2010. The club was already being run by Lloyds man Donald Muir - a fact people forget is that Lloyds also wanted money having been forced to take on Murray's crumbling empire after the 2008 crash. So where exactly is Murray pulling £12m from in the spring of 2010? We went two years without even buying a player at this time.

I am highly sceptical of any claim that Murray made any attempt to resolve the HMRC issue. You also need to consider that Murray made enemies on the way up that he encountered on the way back down.
As I said before, I'm not defending Murray.

I suspect that the HMRC bill was known about prior to that and thats why Muir ended up on the board. It was first made public around 2010 Lloyds must've shat themselves when they saw the liability list that HBoS had. Or at the very least, they wanted their money back before anything untoward happened to Rangers as a result of the Tax Case.

Lets not forget it was Muir and his cohort who brought Craig Whyte to the table as well..
 
They refused because if he could have settled it when it was affordable but fines kept adding up to it was to late
He didn't try to settle it in full mate.

The thing about all the fines and inerest that was allowed to build up, BDO have been able to get rid of quite a bit of it, so they voted down our CVA based on a lie, upon money that they were never owed in the first place. They should have got to vote with what Whyte owed them at the time over the PAYE that he didn't pay.

As another poster said, HMRC allowed a multi million pound meter to run with us but when other clubs like Hearts and clubs down south owe them money, they are off to court for a winding up order like a shot.

Why didn't they do the same with us? We would have at least known about the PAYE issue a lot sooner.
 
Back in 2004 I wrote my Uni dissertation on football finances in our game and had input from a professor at Stirling Uni, I was at a proper Uni obviously in our west end, there was a good understanding about where our game was going amongst a few in the dept so I assume unless things have changed since then he’s prob had a decent sounding board around him. That of course won’t stop the kerrydale accountants posting daily record front pages as reasoned debate .
 
He didn't try to settle it in full mate.

The thing about all the fines and inerest that was allowed to build up, BDO have been able to get rid of quite a bit of it, so they voted down our CVA based on a lie, upon money that they were never owed in the first place. They should have got to vote with what Whyte owed them at the time over the PAYE that he didn't pay.

As another poster said, HMRC allowed a multi million pound meter to run with us but when other clubs like Hearts and clubs down south owe them money, they are off to court for a winding up order like a shot.

Why didn't they do the same with us? We would have at least known about the PAYE issue a lot sooner.

I think they had a clear tactic of giving Whyte enough rope to hang himself (and in turn oldco) as regards the PAYE.

Whether that's acting in good faith might be debatable I suppose, but they clearly wanted a share of the debt that was unambiguously sufficient to vote down a CVA and have some control over the process - and Whyte obliged.
 
I think they had a clear tactic of giving Whyte enough rope to hang himself (and in turn oldco) as regards the PAYE.

Whether that's acting in good faith might be debatable I suppose, but they clearly wanted a share of the debt that was unambiguously sufficient to vote down a CVA and have some control over the process - and Whyte obliged.
They ended up being given a claim of nearly £95m quid to vote the CVA down.

Take away the BS figures and they had around £15m to vote with. They would have IMO enought to still vote down the CVA if they so wished.
 
One other small point.
No one has ever explained what Reid meant when he told people that they were going to nail Rangers to the floor.
What could this mean?
They were going to sign a team to make us second-best for the foreseeable?
They had a manager in line who would reign supreme through his genius?

Somehow I don't think this was ever a phrase supported by sporting intentions.
So, what did it mean and why did he feel confident to voice it?
I have a document in my hand.
That will nail those holy Willie's on the other side of the city to the floor
 
They ended up being given a claim of nearly £95m quid to vote the CVA down.

Take away the BS figures and they had around £15m to vote with. They would have IMO enought to still vote down the CVA if they so wished.

yes, that's my recollection too - even setting aside the EBT cases altogether, the PAYE gave them the right to vote down a CVA.

I think they knew admin (at least) was more nor less inevitable with the EBT cases, and they also knew what Whyte was.

So they were well aware he'd try to control the administration process if he could and try to operate that as a mechanism to use a CVA to minimise what was actually paid under the EBT tax debts.

They effectively allowed him to rack up the PAYE debt as a tactic to avoid that, I think.
 
The SFA have, in their articles of association, the duty to ‘foster the interests’ of their member clubs. They let us down massively.

Previously, admin had been accompanied by slipping to relegation anyway (look at Gretna). As another poster has said the SPL had to CHANGE THE RULES to punish us more, then changed them back so that our punishment couldn’t be replicated on someone else.
 
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I'd disagree somewhat as some of HMRC's actions in this whole case were scandalous.

Allowing mountains of stolen documents to get into the hands of yahoo bloggers. Also constant leaks from staff working for them about the case.

Cutting deals for much less money than owed to them by clubs like Hearts, Newcastle and Arsenal who were using similar loopholes around the same period.

Allowing Whyte to run up nine months of non-payment of tax while issuing Hearts with a winding up order after 30 days. Had they acted much earlier a lot of this might have been avoided.
This is one aspect I still can't get my head round.
Whyte's organisation took PAYE and NI contributions from players and never paid them to HMRC, to me that was theft from the players and staff together with tax evasion ( illegal ) but he was never prosecuted for those offences.

He even instructed his company accountant not to disclose to HMRC or anybody else that he wasn't going to pay that PAYE and NI.

I know somebody will mention ( it has been mentioned before ) that it is the responsibility of the individual e.g. a player to accept final responsibility for his tax submissions but if I had paid tax through my employer and then had to pay it again, because my employer had stolen it, I would have gone to the police.
 
The SFA have, in their articles of association, the duty to ‘foster the interests’ of their member clubs. They let us down massively.

Previously, admin had been accompanied by relegation (look at Gretna, Motherwell, etc). As another poster has said the SPL had to CHANGE THE RULES to punish us more, then changed them back so that our punishment couldn’t be replicated on someone else.
Neither Gretna or Motherwell were relegated due to administration.Gretna were relegated because they finished bottom and Motherwell weren’t relegated at all.
 
The SFA have, in their articles of association, the duty to ‘foster the interests’ of their member clubs. They let us down massively.

Previously, admin had been accompanied by relegation (look at Gretna, Motherwell, etc). As another poster has said the SPL had to CHANGE THE RULES to punish us more, then changed them back so that our punishment couldn’t be replicated on someone else.
then changed them back so that our punishment couldn’t be replicated on someone else.

Is that true? I can't remember due to so much going on at the time.
 
Neither Gretna or Motherwell were relegated due to administration.Gretna were relegated because they finished bottom and Motherwell weren’t relegated at all.
Apologies - I’ve just checked. Motherwell weren’t deducted points at all and so stayed up. The point I was attempting to make was that clubs would often finish in the relegation places anyway, so the 10 point deduction sufficed. With us, we still finished second, so they changed the rules.

I’ll edit my original post.
 
then changed them back so that our punishment couldn’t be replicated on someone else.

Is that true? I can't remember due to so much going on at the time.
It went from a 10 point deduction to a third of our total, to us being thrown into the bottom division.

See post #18 re, them being changed back.
 
I know for an absolute fact that Whyte's intention was to do a pre pack administration. Whatever diligence his advisors had undertaken the football rule that stated the same legal entity had to exit the administration process that entered into it had been completely missed.
 
The only good thing to come from the whole thing is the knowledge that the yahoos, the diddy-club alliance, the football authorities, HMRC, BoS, all conspired to do their very best to destroy Rangers (not to mention the vultures who came to pick the bones)...
and ten years later we were in a Euro Final and in the CL.
 
I know for an absolute fact that Whyte's intention was to do a pre pack administration. Whatever diligence his advisors had undertaken the football rule that stated the same legal entity had to exit the administration process that entered into it had been completely missed.
It was always his intention. He came in, he limited any purchase of anything non matchday to £500 and he had to personally sign it off, he had forced the issue for the safe to be opened so he could take the Arsenal shares quite soon into his reign, he took a serious amount of money out of the club well before he stopped paying the PAYE, and he shortchanged and lied to each and every single member of his staff the day before he plunged the club into admin. He told the staff it would be a 7-10 day period of pain, and after this everything would be back to normal and everyone would keep their jobs and everything would be ok. That was the last time the majority of staff would see this little cunt again.

He knew what he was doing and he was doing everything he could to take as much money as he could out of the place. Even worse was his collusion with Green and Ahmad and the scams they all concocted. That and that other specky little prick Stockbridge, the scams they carried out would make a glass eye tear up.

Fucking scumbags the lot of them.
 
I wonder why DC Thomson pulled out and why they won't tell him why. I would speculate that the book was not going down the path they wanted.

I would certainly agree with him that the story is bigger than just the last 10 years and the story pre-dates the arrival of Whyte. Murray placed the club in serious jeopardy and the actions that lead to 2012 started years before it.

Alarm bells should have been ringing when the club's bankers insisted that Murray stepped down and John McClelland was installed as chairman to sort out the massive debt we'd accumulated.

They were ringing for some fans. Too many others were blinded by the money we were throwing around. At one point the Rangers debt - without any tax case liability - stood at around £80 million, prompting the McClelland appointment. The success under McLeish at a time when the club was undergoing massive financial pain was very much unexpected.

We got the debt down to £6 million at one point. Then Murray came back and we saw that at least quadruple. If I remember correctly we were financially ok up until the late 90s. The failure to secure 10 was the point for me where Murray went into overdrive with his reckless management and where we saw things get completely out of control. It was almost certainly a reaction to Murray's ego taking the hit of missing out on 10iar. From that point on we became far too reckless. That was the start of our downfall.
 
Re the SPL, in various guises they protected clubs like Aberdeen by not allowing a club to be promoted as they didnt have the required amount of seats, they wouldnt allow them to ground share either so they never got promoted and Aberdeen didnt get relegated.

Shortly after they allowed ICT (IIRC) and Gretna to groundshare.

McCoist was right, they lined up to give us a kick and hope that it killed us off.

There was no rule to cover change of ownership this way and it should have been down to the SPL, but they shat it and allowed the other clubs to vote on it.

I might be wrong but I think Lawwell wanted us relegated (with various sliding penalties in subsequent years) but it got away from him and the mob voted us out.
 
Just like to add, if I remember right, before Murray bought into Rangers he tried to take over Ayr United but the people running the club at the time would not entertain him. Big question, 'Why would that be'?
They knew him. We didn't. Or didnt want to.
 
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