Complex fraud trials like Whyte's takeover are notoriously difficult to obtain a conviction. Mainly because they are so complicated and time consuming that the actions of the accused mostly fly over the head of your average jury member and they get bored very quickly.
The most common phrase heard in a Jury Room at the end of each day would normally be "does anybody have a clue what that was all about?"
In order to combat this, the Prosecutor has to simplify evidence to a level that the jury will both understand and retain an interest.
In Whyte's case, that did not happen and the direction taken by the Crown was astonishing.
Whyte bought the club for £1, with a condition that he paid off the debt to Lloyds, which was circa £17m. If he didn't pay off the debt to Lloyd's, he didn't get the club, it was that simple. Therein lay the problem. Whyte barely had a pot to piss in and certainly didn't have £17m lying around, so he had to find a way of obtaining the £17m.
Enter Ticketus. Whyte approaches them and they agree to purchase 3 years worth of Season Tickets for just under £20m IIRC. The problem being that Whyte can't sell them the Season Ticket rights until he owns Rangers and he can't own Rangers until he sells the Season Ticket rights, so he's stuck in a Catch 22 position, unable to carry out either part of the transaction until the other part happened.
I can't disclose my sources and have to be careful what I say, but it is my information that certain documentation was 'amended' in order to to allow both transactions to take place. (Most will recall that Ticketus lost out on every penny that they gave Whyte, due to their failure to do proper due diligence).
That fact in its own should have been enough to get a conviction for the fraudulent takeover of our club, yet it is my belief that it was not even brought up at trial. Probably as a result of incorrect procedure being used with Warrants to obtain evidence.
The whole trial was a shambles, due to best evidence that couldn't be led, irrelevant evidence that was led (just to get a few well known faces into the witness box) and unnecessarily over complicating other evidence led.
