A decade on from the Nimmo Smith findings regarding what the original Rangers got up to with their EBT tax scam, it remains a legacy issue emanating from the death of that club.
It is entirely apposite that my buddy, the late Paul McConville, provides some background here.
Thanks, big man!
My thoughts on this legacy issue from the death of Rangers in 2012 was the news that Queens Park had fielded an ineligible player in a cup game.
Of course, it was correct that they should be ejected from the tournament.
Now, the lesson for all the other tenants on Planet Fitba should be volume volume volume!
Field one ineligible player, and you are thrown out of the competition.
However, if you field scores of them over a decade, then football authorities in Fair Caledonia will find some way to say, “no biggie”.
That is, of course, if the club in question plays their home games at Ibrox.
If anyone with a facility of reason needs evidence that the Ibrox brand is a favoured franchise, it is how the Nimmo Smith Commission was set up.
The devil is in the detail, and that is around how Nimmo Smith was, let’s say, not fully briefed about the status of the Discounted Options Scheme that led to what became known as the Wee Tax Case.
A key to understanding this can be found in the Resolution 12 archive.
That tax scam was set up for Rangers in 1999, and in the room was Mr Campbell Ogilvie.
It is too contrived for a novel to have the same chap as President of the SFA in 2012 when the club he faithfully served died because of their tax shenanigans.
Local journalists should have been all over that one.
Sadly, the succulent rules prevented them from being, well, journalists.
One character who played a crucial role in the Nimmo Smith findings was one Sandy Bryson.
You can read about his role here.
At the time, his name seemed familiar.
Then I remembered.
Back when the Bunnet got lawyered up over the delayed registration of Jorge Cadete (once more, this was to assist the favoured franchise at Ibrox), Jim Farry was first up to give evidence.
Next in line was none other than Mr Sandy Bryson.
The SFA internal file notes that their lawyer noted that Mr B was “very nervous” about the prospect of giving evidence.
Fortunately for the poor dear, his testimony was not needed as the late Mr Farry had so spectacularly collapsed in the box that it was game over.
In the aftermath of the UK Supreme Court ruling on the Rangers EBT case in July 2017, the entire status of those fraudulent titles should have been re-examined.
That is even without looking at how the Discounted Options Scheme was initially misrepresented to Nimmo Smith by the folks who set up the probe in the first place.
This is the very definition of a legacy issue in sporting governance.
Now, if an NUJ member in another country can be across this story, then, dear reader, you might want to ask why the local media remain schtum on this decade-long sporting scandal.
Moreover, in many ways, the venal invertebrates on the sports desks go about their daily stenography duties pretending that none of it happened.
The plot for the sequel to Native Shore is definitely taking shape.
Consequently, I have an appointment with my creative side down the Word Mines.
If the local media in Glasgow would finally start to do their job on the myriad of stories flowing like effluent out of Ibrox, then I would be a very grateful Fenian in Dún na nGall.
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Some financial “irregularities” coming to light at Man City. Developing story as someone once wrote.
That’s all but 2/3 of the season gone now.
8 games to go before the split, 5 at home,3 away.
It would be a massive understatement to say that Celtic are in a good place just now.
9 point lead, huge goal difference advantage. The league title may well be in the bag before the split.
If titles of oldco were stripped – which they rightfully should have been – then ‘the powers that be’ would be open to all sorts of claims for pounds of compensation for clubs that missed out on a European place. Oldco can’t be sued and they can argue that the governing bodies issued them the licence therefore it’s not oldco’s fault. The only exception to this is the issue pursued by Resolution 11. Oldco and governing bodies were well aware of ‘wee tax case’ and that Rangers 1.0 should not have got a European licence for that season.
An enormous can of worms that no football club board seems to want to open!
Can the taxman not go after sevco players who had EBTS
They have been doing, I believe its why Barry Ferguson was declared bankrupt. Possibly only chasing the biggest EBTs since money owed would require to be worth the effort (in HMRC Lawyer’s fees) to pursue them? [I.e it would cost them £50k to even begin to pursue you, so you would have to owe £75k plus etc. for it to be worth the effort on the public purse!]
A good article. I also remember the SFA compliance officer giving evidence at the Nimmo-Smith inquiry and stating that just having more money to spend on players and their wages does not by any means guarantee you success (so all the trophies won by Celtic, old rangers, Real Madrid and Man Utd over the years has been down to good coaching and nothing else}. This persons name was one of the most Irish catholic names that I have ever heard so the careerists/souptakers have to be watched, at least with Bryson, Farry et al you know where you stand but the enemy within are a real problem.
It’s true enough in and of itself. Hard to argue with: what you do with the money is what matters etc.
It’s utterly irrelevant though. The only question is whether the rules were broken. If that’s a yes, then titles should have been stripped, winners’ fees reclaimed, points recalculated etc.
It is perfectly feasible to argue that Ben Johnson might have won the 88 Olympic gold without doping. I believe he’d recently won the World Championship without testing positive for dope. He was clearly a talented, able and level-appropriate competitor in his sport.
But, he cheated. How much, who knew what, whether he would or could have prevailed anyway and other questions are interesting but not relevant to the decision to recall his gold medal and present it to the second sprinter over the line, who was the first to cross it legally.
Could Queens Park not challenge this decision citing a prior precedent. The irrefutable evidence has already been established.
What a chance for willie haughey to make a name for himself
How they get away with this stuff it’s beyond me more has to be done it’s sickening…if it was any other football club there would be a public enquiry
It’s not only our succulent stenographers who are quiet on this issue. Our own Celtic FC are also unforgivably silent; or maybe they just can’t be heard from the back of the bus?
Sadly until all the clubs in Scotland get together and call out the SFA etc nothing will change .
I’m glad you highlighted the “Queen’s Park” decision, as it ,once again, demonstrates the hypocrisy and corruption of our game at the highest level…and leaves us with a quick summation of the problem…
ONLY IN SCOTLAND….Brother.
So if I was to go into a shop and steal every other day it’s okay if I didn’t really mean to do it…I wasn’t in a sound mind fs everyone would be doing it and alot of people would be in court unless u knew the judge and the proprietors
You would think that the SFA numpties would have rebranded their inept organisation by now,
in an attempt to ‘put some PR distance’ between themselves and the ‘old SFA’ and its legacy issues?
Those legacy issues are ALWAYS going to hang around the SFA like a bad smell,
and footy supporters have much, much longer memories than elephants!
Genuinely pained me when watching Leanne Dempster Chief Executive at Queens Park FC talk about it being a sore one but having to own the mistake last night at half time in the Queen’s Park vs Ayr United game. Happened to Elgin City in League Cup earlier in Season 3-0 defeat. Happened to Kilmarnock season before last as I recall. Happened to Albion Rovers in last 4 or 5 seasons. One rule for all senior clubs in Scotland bar one – another rule for Sevco. The clubs did great work to ensure Sevco started life in bottom tier. I just wish they would or could do so again re title and cups stripping but it is old news and not their titles or cups in the main; and do so again re VAR but again Quo Bene – them a wee bit but generally Celtic benefit from Rangers being made to play on a level playing field and only in seasons when Celtic are not “massively better than everyone” as Martin O Neil put it when he quickly said in late 2000/early 2001 ” We need to be massively better than everyone up here to win anything”
Scotland’s clubs didn’t do great work when Rangers FC died. Though they did at least stop Regan and Doncaster from parachuting a Rangers v2 into the SPL or SFL1. But only because fans put pressure on their clubs. They got told their fans would walk away if they went along with Regan’s and Doncaster’s scam.
However the clubs did fuck all about the other shenanigans that went on. They said and did nothing about Sevco getting SFL membership when the new club didn’t have the required three years of accounts that the rules demanded. They said and did nothing when Sevco was handed a specially invented SFL membership category that had been cooked up by the corrupt twosome for Scotland’s newest club. They said and did nothing when Doncaster transferred Sevco the titles and trophies “won” by a club that had died before Sevco was created. They said and did nothing when a “club” with no membership status played its first game in SFL3.
The clubs didn’t sack the spectacularly corrupt and incompetent SFA and SPL management. The clubs didn’t reform those totally rotten and moribund organisations either, problems that are still festering today.
The clubs said and did nothing about the Glib and Shameless Liar. He failed the fit and proper test for a club director because of his convictions for tax dodging. He failed that test a second time because he’d been a director of a club that had had an insolvency event. I think there were others on the boards of the two clubs who should have been banned for that too.
The corruption here is far, far worse than anything at FIFA. Their crooks only had their hands in the till.