Friends in low places

When Rangers died a decade ago a lot of folks were hurting about that.

Some of them were in positions of authority, including the judiciary.

Rangers had died and someone somehow had to answer for that.

Dear reader, this remarkable story from The Times is worth your time.

It is behind their paywall, therefore some of ye might not be able to read it.

Your Humble Correspondent has a subscription so here you go:

 

The sheriff who granted an unlawful warrant during the botched police operation into the takeover of Rangers FC is set to be investigated after claims that his “vociferous” support for the club compromised his impartiality.

An official complaint has been submitted against Sheriff Lindsay Wood, alleging that he disregarded the apparent conflict of interest created by his affiliation with the Scottish champions.

Wood, who regularly appears at Rangers matches and social events, is said to have a framed photograph of Ibrox in his chambers.

It has emerged that Detective Chief Inspector Jim Robertson, the senior investigating officer during the ill-fated fraud case, is also an ardent supporter. The saga has already triggered a public inquiry and cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds.

When Rangers fell into administration in 2012 the finance experts David Grier, David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, of the consultancy firm Duff & Phelps, were appointed to manage the club’s affairs. All three were arrested two years later over allegations of fraud linked to the club’s collapse and sale.

Although they were cleared of all charges many Rangers fans believe that they failed to do enough to prevent the club’s demise.

During the fraud investigation Wood signed off a warrant that allowed officers to raid the London offices of Holman Fenwick Willan, the legal firm representing Duff & Phelps. The operation was later ruled to have been an abuse of state power. Grier has now submitted a formal complaint against Wood to the Judicial Office for Scotland, alleging that his close affinity to Rangers meant that he should not have been involved in issuing warrants to the investigating detectives.

Wood was photographed in the Ibrox directors box in the year before Grier, Whitehouse and Clark were arrested. In 2018 he was a guest at the official Rangers Burns supper and chaired an event featuring the former club managers Graeme Souness and Ally McCoist.

“Sheriff Wood is a lifelong and vociferous supporter of Rangers Football Club,” Grier claimed. “He was far too close to the club to be granting warrants to allow investigation into its demise.”

Grier pointed to the code on judicial independence which says that judges will excuse themselves from hearing a case, known as a recusal, if they have a personal interest in it.

One senior legal source with knowledge of the case said: “This shameful episode appears to demonstrate that tribalism is alive and well within Scotland’s criminal justice system. Ministers need to take action.”

The source claimed that many supporters regarded Grier, Whitehouse and Clark as enemies of their club.

“There was a feeling that these three guys had come up from England and wrecked their beloved Rangers,” the source said. “Many cheered on the legal action against them, seeing it as a form of payback.”

The warrant to seize documents from the offices of Holman Fenwick Willan was requested by Robertson, who led the inquiry. In court he denied chanting The Billy Boys, a Rangers song with sectarian lyrics, during interviews with suspects and witnesses. He said he may have “referenced” it. It is alleged that Robertson wore Rangers cufflinks while conducting interviews.

In a statement submitted in 2019, Robertson confirmed that he had met Wood on December 4, 2015, noting that the sheriff had “dealt with a number of the warrants sought in the case”.

Robertson added: “Sheriff Wood was interested in the case. He told us that he was a season ticket holder at Ibrox and had a framed picture of Ibrox on the walls of his chamber.”

The Times has learnt that Christina Herriott, Wood’s court manager, declared her support for Rangers FC on social media and criticised the finance firm at the centre of the bungled fraud investigation into the club’s collapse and sale.

Christina Herriott’s online CV states that she is a manager with the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service in Glasgow. Robertson submitted a statement in which he said he was told by Wood in 2015 that he and Herriott — who as his clerk was responsible for the administration of cases in the court — were both Rangers season ticket holders.

Herriott’s Twitter profile states: “It’s Rangers for me” and features the club’s crest. In September 2014 she tweeted: “As soon as Duff & Phelps were appointed there was no hope of anything good for Rangers happening.”

Two years earlier Herriott, who has no involvement in judicial decision-making, accused the financial consultancy firm of “making money out of the Rangers crisis”. She later gave evidence in a hearing where David Grier, a senior figure with Duff & Phelps, argued he had been arrested maliciously before being cleared of all charges.

Herriott, who has now made her Twitter profile private, also shared tweets which referred to Nicola Sturgeon as “Scotland’s First Megalomaniac”, accused a high-profile referee of “cheating Rangers” and described the Crown Office as “not fit for purpose”.

Asked to comment on behalf of Herriott, a spokeswoman for the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service stressed that clerks of court only provided administrative support. “They have no involvement in judicial decision-making,” she said. The service declined to comment on Herriott’s social media posts.

‘A Rangers fan officer, Rangers fan sheriff and Rangers fan clerk’

Grier said: “This has the impression that a senior police officer who is a Rangers fan arranged for a Rangers fan sheriff, and his Rangers fan clerk, to grant a warrant to search the offices of my solicitors.” Grier insists that the warrant should have gone through the High Court, where proceedings against him had commenced, instead of being presented to a “sympathetic” sheriff.

In 2016 judges at the High Court in London ruled that the search warrant which led to privileged documents being seized from Holman Fenwick Willan was of “excessive and unlawful width”. In a separate Scottish judgment Lord Carloway found that the warrant was “oppressive” and “executed without proper safeguards”.

Grier and his legal team claim that Wood gave contradictory and misleading accounts in two explanatory reports submitted to Carloway. They allege that the latter was “more or less identical” to a warrant request which Robertson had previously submitted.

In his statement Robertson confirmed that he had left a copy of the document with Wood.

Grier said: “I have always been brought up to consider that the system of justice in Scotland is of the highest order. However, things appear to have gone badly wrong and there are significant and important questions which now need to be answered.”

The Judicial Office for Scotland said: “If a conduct complaint were received in respect of any member of the judiciary, it would be dealt with thoroughly and rigorously on a confidential basis in accordance with the Judiciary (Scotland) Rules 2017. It would not be appropriate for a sheriff to comment on any case that has been dealt with through the court process.”

The Scottish Police Federation did not answer a request for comment.

Behind the story

Almost £40 million of public money has been paid to settle claims by people who were prosecuted maliciously after the botched Rangers fraud investigation.

Among them was the businessman Craig Whyte, who bought Rangers for £1 from Sir David Murray in May 2011. The club took on large debts before its parent company went into liquidation the following year.

Whyte was arrested and accused of using money from future ticket sales to buy the club while claiming the cash was his.

Seven men were prosecuted in 2014 in connection with the investigation but Whyte was the only one whose case went before a jury. He was cleared after a seven-week trial in 2017.

The former Rangers administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, both 56, of Duff & Phelps, received a settlement worth more than £24 million and an apology from James Wolffe QC, who was lord advocate.

Last month the Court of Session ruled that the police investigation into their colleague David Grier, 60, had been riven with “incompetence” and a “lack of professsionalism”. It found, however, that he had not been prosecuted maliciously.

The Times revealed three weeks ago that Grier would appeal after the emergence of minutes from a Crown Office meeting in 2015 that featured the phrase: “Nail the three Duff & Phelps people”.

Grier, who was cleared of all charges, claims the document proves his arrest was motivated by ill will. He said: “If anyone in the street was to say they wanted to ‘nail’ someone, wouldn’t that be judged as an act of malice?”

Grier had launched an unsuccessful £9 million damages claim against Police Scotland and the lord advocate, insisting his prosecution was malicious. In a lengthy ruling Lord Tyre made no reference to the desire expressed by the Crown to “nail” Grier, Whitehouse and Clark.

However, he found that Detective Chief Inspector Jim Robertson, who led the failed inquiry, had acted in an “unacceptable, intimidatory and threatening” manner and had given “patently untrue” evidence.

The final cost to the taxpayer is expected to rise significantly and a public inquiry has been commissioned into the scandal.

The Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said: “The judge in [Grier’s] case was satisfied the actions of prosecutors were not motivated by any purposes other than the pursuit of the interests of justice.

“The previous lord advocate committed the Crown to support a judge-led inquiry once all litigation is over and apologised for the cost to the public purse.”

Assistant Chief Constable Alan Speirs said: “Police Scotland will fully assist with the inquiry. Lord Tyre’s judgment highlights serious issues.”

 

Good grief!

As I read through this ongoing shitshow I think of my big buddy Paul.

He would have loved all of this.

Of course, there is another Paul who is no longer with us who would have deployed his brilliant forensic mind to unpack just exactly what was going on.

The important fact to take away from this, as per the featured image, is that Rangers did indeed die.

Those folks in the criminal justice system were not grieving over a holding company vehicle or even an engine room subsidiary.

It is the undying shame of the Fitba Fourth Estate that they continue to parrot the Orwellian lie that the team that Jim Baxter played for still exists.