Dave King has hit back at claims from Sevco chairman David Somers that he wouldn’t provide proof of his £16m rescue package.
The serial tyre-kicker made a flying visit to Glasgow last month and proposed a complex deal to salvage the troubled club from administration.
Despite positive spin surrounding his offer Mr King flew back to South Africa without investing a penny as the Ibrox board turned to Mickey Ashley for an emergency loan of £2m.
Eyebrows had been raised at the decision to turn Mr King away but Mr Somers told Sky Sports that the man from Castlemilk had been unable to provide the board with proof of his funding or the names of his business partners.
Responding to that from his base in South Africa, where a judge described him as a glib and shameless liar King claimed: “We had private discussions with both Graham Wallace and Sandy Easdale in which we told them that we would immediately provide proof of funding and details of the full make-up of the consortium following confirmation from Sandy Easdale that the shareholders whom he represents were prepared to support the terms of our investment proposal in principle.
“Sandy Easdale agreed to proceed on this basis. Unfortunately he was not then able to provide the confirmation we asked for. There was no possibility of proceeding any further without the support of Sandy Easdale’s group who had the power to block our proposed investment.”
Mr King added: “Unfortunately, his (Mr Somers) utterances are what we have come to expect of recent appointments to the Rangers board. Fortunately the fans will not be fooled by such platitudes.
“I truly hope that those fans that continue to blindly support the club (for the right reasons) finally realise that 140 years of the club’s history will be irretrievably lost unless they withhold their financial support for the current regime at matchdays and the retail outlets.”
Those comments contradict the bizarre logic put forward by Sevco that the club’s history remains intact despite liquidation. Following that viewpoint the liquidation of Sevco will have no impact with a new club able to pick up on the history shrugging aside liquidation.
Mr King sat on the board of Rangers (IL) as Dave Murray sold the club to Craig Whyte for £1 in 2011 and remained a director until the club was liquidated.
While Charles Green paid Duff and Phelps £5.5m for Ibrox Stadium and Murray Park Mr King remained in South Africa issuing statements from afar.
Earlier in the day Mr Somers had broken his silence on the crisis engulfing the club that required a share issue in September followed by loans from Mr Ashley in October and November.
“Where ( King’s offer) fell down was really at stage one,” Mr Somers told Sky Sports. “When I said to all three (the others being Mr Ashley and Brian Kennedy) of these people ‘would you show me proof of funds?’ two showed me proof of funds. The consortium did not.
“The second question for the consortium was ‘I know there are eight of you, I only know three of you. Can I please have the other five names?’ And the message I was getting all the time was ‘if you agree to do a deal, if you persuade 75% of shareholders, then we’ll show you funds and you can have the other names’.
“It wasn’t meeting the due diligence requirements. I cannot go to shareholders when I don’t know all the names, I can’t check the names out and I can’t put my hand on my heart and say ‘these guys have the money’.
“In the end we had to move on to stage two which left two providers. Then it was a simple case of which provider was offering the lowest interest rate – Mike Ashley was offering zero interest which is difficult to beat – and which provider wanted least security – again Mike Ashley only wanted a small amount relative to the other deal. Once we got to that stage it was a no-brainer which one we were going with.”
In the announcement for Mr Ashley’s £1m loan for November Sevco confirmed that further funding would be required to survive until the end of the year.
