Ally McCoist has joined the misguided chorus of sympathy for Dave Murray.
The latest stage of the on-going EBT tax case has unleashed a tidal wave of praise for Murray despite the fact that the EBT tax case is far from resolved with Rangers found guilty on five illegal EBT”s and Lord Doherty sending a number of cases back to the First Tier Tribunal.
HMRC are almost certain to continue the case until it reaches the House of Lords but following the latest step Murray got out of his debt bunker to criticise Her Majesty’s Revenue and Custom service.
Despite his catastrophic mismanagement of the club, bankrolled for over a decade by his close friends at the Bank of Scotland, no one from within Ibrox has dared to criticise Murray.
During his time at Ibrox Murray introduced the Discount Option Scheme to pay Craig Moore, Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer which resulted in the £6m wee tax case that went unpaid.
In 2004 MIH had to ‘invest’ £50m into Rangers due to an £80m debt mountain that ultimately ended up being propped up by the tax-payer.
Over the last year it has emerged that the MIH Pension Fund has a £20m hole despite Murray himself enjoying a £6m EBT.
Despite that disastrous trail, and the decision to sell Rangers to Craig Whyte for £1 in 2011, Murray retains the sympathy and support of McCoist.
“I’m absolutely delighted for Sir David Murray.” the £800,000-a-year Ibrox boss told Sky Sports when asked about the latest twist in the EBT case. “Sir David actually said also that there are no winners in the case and that doesn’t seem to be too far away from the truth.
“I think it’s a little bit, if anything, satisfaction for the club, for our ex-players, for the supporters, for everybody really, but at the same time, I won’t lie, this will slightly leave a bitter taste in the mouth after what has happened to us in the last two or three years.
“Everybody’s got an explanation to do – probably HMRC, the people that pursued it – there’s a lot of questions that now have to be answered.
“You don’t want to look back, we want to look forward, but at the same time the relevant authorities will have to explain one or two decisions.
“Sir David Murray deserves one or two answers as well. I’ll be watching with interest to see the outcome perhaps of one or two statements and one or two questions that hopefully will be answered.”
Perhaps McCoist could ask Murray to explain why EBT payments weren’t disclosed to the SFA resulting in an unpaid £200,000 fine for the old club following the Lord Nimmo Smith investigation.
