Paying the penalty for the death of Rangers

A decade ago, a Stateside buddy who was rubbernecking at the Ibrox shitshow from across the Pond made a darkly fascinating prediction.

He said that “someone will suffer for this”.

I asked him to expand, and he continued:

“Okay, so you go into someone else’s town and decide to liquidate a sports club, but don’t pick the one that most of the cops are in love with!”

That is essentially my take from the fallout that has seen Sheriff Lindsay Wood retire after an official probe found “that he colluded with a senior police officer before submitting a dishonest and misleading report during the botched police investigation into the takeover of the Ibrox club.”

You can read the piece here by Marc Horne in the Times.

For those who cannot get behind the paywall, here it is:

A sheriff who owned shares in Rangers FC is to retire after it emerged that he colluded with a senior police officer before submitting a dishonest and misleading report during the botched police investigation into the takeover of the Ibrox club.

David Grier, 61, a consultant with the financial firm Duff & Phelps, lodged a formal complaint against Sheriff Lindsay Wood with the Judicial Office for Scotland last May.

Wood granted 22 warrants to police during the ill-fated fraud investigation despite regularly appearing at Rangers matches and social events and being said to have a framed photograph of the club’s stadium in his chambers.

The warrants included one in 2015 which permitted officers to raid the London offices of Holman Fenwick Willan, the legal firm representing Duff & Phelps.

This police operation was later found to be unlawful and “executed without proper safeguards”.

Following an investigation Craig Turnbull, sheriff principal of Glasgow and Strathkelvin, has concluded that Wood submitted a misleading report attempting to justify his decision, which contained information he was ignorant of when he granted the warrant.

Wood’s account appeared to rely heavily on information taken directly from a “police warrant request sheet” compiled by Detective Chief Inspector Jim Robertson, the senior investigating officer, who is said to have chanted a Rangers song while conducting interviews.

A judge has since ruled that Robertson had given evidence that was “patently untrue”, acted in an “intimidatory and threatening” way and conducted himself in a “reprehensible” manner.

When Rangers fell into administration in 2012, the finance experts Grier, David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, from the firm Duff & Phelps, now Kroll, 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. They were exonerated but many Rangers fans believe that they failed to do enough to prevent the club’s demise.

The scandal, which also saw four other men being charged and cleared, has already triggered a public inquiry and cost the taxpayer more than £40 million in payments to individuals who were prosecuted maliciously.

Grier complained that Wood had obtained and used a police warrant request sheet to compile an explanatory report submitted to Lord Carloway, the lord justice general, “without telling the court that was what he had done”.

Turnbull found that Wood did not dispute this. “The sheriff relied upon the police information sheet in the preparation of the supplementary report,” he wrote.

“He accepts that the report looked as if it was his own note of what he was told by the police officer [Robertson] in the application for the warrant in question. The sheriff accepts that there was material in the report which he did not know when he granted the warrant.”

Finding the complaint substantiated, Turnbull added: “An [appeal] court has a legitimate expectation that reports provided to it by judges of the court below are complete, accurate and not misleading.

“In the present case the supplementary report was misleading.”

Turnbull noted that Wood had accepted responsibility and apologised, adding: “The sheriff has given notification of his intention to retire in May 2023.”

He found that the sheriff had not discharged his responsibilities properly.

“That failure requires to be marked in some way,” he said. “My recommendation is that formal advice be given.”

However, his recommendation was overturned by Carloway, Scotland’s most senior judge, who said no action would be required.

A response issued by the Judicial Office states: “Almost seven years have elapsed since the conduct complained of occurred. The sheriff has recognised his error and expressed remorse.

“In these and other circumstances in relation to Sheriff Wood’s tenure, the lord president has decided that it would neither be appropriate nor desirable to issue formal advice.”

Grier expressed astonishment at Carloway’s intervention. “It now appears that passage of time is to be taken as an acceptable defence for wrongdoing,” he said.

“When this matter was first raised in 2019 Sheriff Wood had the opportunity to admit to colluding with DCI Robertson and misleading the appeal court.

“Since then I have incurred considerable cost in exposing this conduct.”

A senior legal figure said that the decision to take no action against Wood was “extraordinary”.

“It is a fundamental principle of our system of justice that it must be operated honestly and with integrity and part of that is coming down hard on breaches,” they said.

“However, it seems that it is okay for a sheriff to mislead a court if it was a long time ago and you are quick enough to retire.”

Wood held shares in Rangers’ old parent company, which became worthless when the club went into administration in 2012. Records from 2008 confirm he owned 110 shares.

In a statement submitted in 2019, Robertson said: “Sheriff Wood was interested in the case. He told us he was a season ticket holder and had a framed picture of Ibrox on the walls of his chamber.”

Turnbull did not examine the apparent conflict of interest alleged to be generated by Wood’s close affinity with Rangers.

Grier launched a £9 million damages claim against Police Scotland and the lord advocate, arguing that he had been wrongfully arrested.

The Court of Session ruled last January that he had not been prosecuted maliciously.

The decision was upheld this month after an appeal, which found the police investigation was characterised by “incompetence, poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.”

Grier has also submitted a complaint against Robertson, 54, who is believed to have applied for early retirement.

The Judicial Office said: “Judicial conduct complaints are dealt with in accordance with the Judiciary (Scotland) Rules 2017. This seeks to ensure judges uphold the highest standards of professional and personal conduct both in and out of court.”

I have written here many times that the chaps who followed Craig Whyte up the marble staircase at the start of 2011 didn’t grasp the cultural enormity of what they were planning.

As my late great buddy Paul McConville pointed out, it was all about “the switcheroo”.

It was something that Craigie boy and his pals had done many times before.

Liquidate the company, stiff the creditors and then move the assets into a new corporate structure.

Within UK insolvency law, it was all perfectly legal.

Mr Whyte and his associates knew that they could count on the assistance of the governing bodies at Hampden and, of course, a compliant media.

Unfortunately, the Motherwell-born billionaire hesitated to push the administration button after Super Salary crashed the Rainjurzz out of Europe.

He was waiting for the Big Tax Case bill to drop out of the First Tier Tribunal.

This meant that he was forced to use tax remittances to run the club.

That caused Hector to make his move.

Your humble correspondent even wrote a piece the day after administration where I confidently predicted that the club established in 1872 would be liquidated as HMRC would block the CVA.

They did, and Rangers died.

For once, the local media printed the truth about the situation, and it made for a gorgeous front page.

However, this was no ordinary SME.

It was the club that many state functionaries in Fair Caledonia had a deep love for.

Consequently, vengeance was in the air.

Hence the featured image.

My Tweet sums up my view on this since the death of RFC in 2012.

Paul McConville assured me that the death of the original rangers and the setting up of Sevco Scotland Limited (now trading as The Rangers Football Club) would lead to “a decade of civil and criminal legal action”.

As usual, the big man was spot on.

When the forensic detail of the foregoing is considered, then it is little wonder that the Ibrox brand does seem to get the rub of the green.

As with the late Jim Farry, our first destination in search of an explanation must be about culture rather than conspiracy.

There was no need for some secret conclave to agree that the registration of Jorge Cadete should be held back.

Instead, the SFA chap acted in accordance with the central message of his culture.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t think a litigious North American businessman would challenge him.

The case of the staunch sheriff shines a light on the nature of Scottish society.

When do you consider all of that, then ask yourself this:

What chance has a penalty shout in the Kilmarnock box tomorrow?

So, although a judge was found to have allowed his love of all things Ibrox to lead him to break the rules, somehow, match officials are hewn from some higher grade of humanity.

Really?

I’m sure in the land of the First Amendment that the sports guys would call that one straight!