Richard Gough has taken the Rangers (IL) tax cheating scandal to a new low by writing an entire column on the notion that Henrik Larsson had been paid by an EBT during the 1997/98 season!
The Swedish born defender quit Ibrox in 1997 but returned after a strangely short spell with Kansas City Wizard in the Major League Soccer.
The lure of a return to Ibrox proved too much to resist as he donned that cherished blue jersey once again in October 97 and famously celebrated a goal against Celtic with pressing ten fingers into the air as Walter Smith’s side looked nailed on to win a tenth title.
By the end of the season- despite the spending spree that brought Marco Negri, Lorenzo Amoruso, Jonas Thern, Joakim Bjokland, Sergio Porrini, Rino Gattuso, Stale Stensaas in to join Paul Gascoigne and Brian Laudrup- Gough had to settle for being runners-up to a Celtic side that started the season with defeats to Hibs and Dunfermline.
That spending spree was funded by the Bank of Scotland thanks to Dave Murray’s close links with Gavin Masterton. In 2008 Lloyds TSB were saved by a Government bail out with the Murray Group accounting for £900m of their £27bn debt.
Rather than discuss the disastrous EBT policy embarked on by Dave Murray after losing the league Gough took the argument in a whole new direction.
Writing in the Scottish Sun he wondered: “Here’s a scenario for you. Can you imagine if it emerged in later years that Henrik Larsson had an EBT during that season?
“If it turned out the Swede — Celtic’s key player in that title triumph — was paid via a scheme that’s now infamous in Scottish football.
“Following the logic of the real-life never-ending EBT row, I’d be due a league winner’s medal.
“For me and all the rest of my Rangers team-mates, ten-in-a-row would suddenly be a reality.
“You’d think I’d be delighted to see my name written into the history books, right?
“Wrong. I would have no interest in that medal. I would have no interest in seeing Celtic stripped of that historic title.
“That is the honest truth. It would mean nothing to me.
“It wouldn’t matter if Wim Jansen’s entire Celtic squad had EBTs, they won it fair and square on the pitch.
“And that’s the reason I can’t get my head around the continued clamour to rip titles away from Rangers”.
The clamour to take the titles from Rangers(IL) is because they played by different rules to the other clubs.
While Hibs, Aberdeen, Berwick Rangers, Queen of the South, Falkirk and Celtic put Her Majesty before winning football matches the regime at Ibrox recruited players with the incentive that their tax liability would be negligible with money paid into offshore trusts NETTO.
Dado Prso, Stefan Klos, Michael Mols, Christian Nerlinger and locals such as Barry Ferguson, Neil McCann, Alex Rae, Billy Dodds and Steven Thompson all eagerly signed up to the scheme to deny Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs their fair share. As did managers Dick Advocaat, Alex McLeish and Paul le Guen while administrators like Campbell Ogilvie and Andrew Dickson did the same.
In January 2003 Dodds went to Dundee United with Thompson moving to Ibrox. Dodds was given a £190,000 EBT sweetener to take away the pain of a salary drop while Tommo enjoyed a £485,000 EBT jackpot for his time at the club, over £20,000 for each goal scored.
What does Gough think attracted Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer from Chelsea and Barcelona?
With HMRC winning the Big Tax Case there is a demand from supporters of most clubs that players incorrectly registered at Ibrox are treated the same way as Spartans and East Stirling.
If the registration wasn’t completed properly, if the SFA and SPL weren’t informed of all payments then results are overturned regardless of the ‘they won it on the pitch’ argument. Ben Johnston won the 1988 Olympic 100 metres on the track and Lance Armstrong won several Tour De France titles on the roads.
Stripping titles and removing medals is a red herring, the real issue is dealing with all clubs in the same manner.
Tax exile Gough was at the forefront of the 2014 campaign to persuade Sevco fans not to buy season tickets, in January of this year the club took a £5m loan from Mike Ashley to see out the season.
Earlier this season Gough was appointed global ambassador in a bid to encourage ex-pat supporters to invest in a club that was booted off the Alternative Investment Market following Dave King’s takeover.
Sevco’s 2014/15 accounts revealed a loss of £7.5m and came with a going concern warning that they won’t see out the current season without outside investment.
Over his seven years at Celtic Her Majesty received millions of pounds from the earnings of 242 goal Larsson, perhaps captain of industry Murray signed the wrong Swede?
CLICK HERE to read some of the names that enjoyed EBT payments.
CLICK HERE to read Ian Fraser interview Murray about his business collapse.
CLICK HERE to read Ian Fraser on Murray, Masterton and Charlotte 18.
CLICK HERE to read Ian Fraser on Operation Hornet, the investigation into HBOS collapse.
Can someone tell me the actual taxes the rotten mob failed to pay please?
The Big Tax Case is over £47m that should have been subject to income tax and national insurance, interest and penalties now due on that.
Liquidation began when HMRC walked away from a CVA offer on the £21m owed, a combination of Wee Tax Case and non payment during the 2011/12 season.
Cheers Joe
does gough not realise if they strip celtic of that title then rangers would be stripped of the titles they won during that period so they would not even have got nine please point this out to him but when you see he writes for the sun that says it all
Celtic paid their taxes and NI, you and your monkey friends didn’t. So you’ll now pay the penalty.
SMELL THE GLOVE !
HH
Is this player a big cliff Richard fan ?
If these were all loans then surely that money is still due to the Old Rangers company and should be repaid so that the creditors can be repaid more money.
So lets see it. Get your hands in your pockets and repay the money to the club you all live so much. That would be the honest and moral thing to do. repay your debts.
Without the bloggers the ordinary football fan would be unaware that what he was watching for over a decade was not a clean sport.
Like athletics, Scottish football, is tainted by doping……….financial doping, but doping all the same.
They have been punished enough, time to move on for the sake of the game, no appetite for title stripping, we hear the apologists cry.
In a proper democracy the media would have been taking the lead on a story of this magnitude. Some journo could have made a name for himself but instead they are cowering for fear of a backlash from the fans of the establishment team.
The Gough article is beyond parody, but not untypical of the crap that’s being served up to us.
We are not all gullible, deluded idiots. We know when we are being fed a line.
It’s telling in itself that Resolution 12 hardly gets a mention in the media. The hacks know the score, they just won’t print it.
Write/email the SFA, ask them the question, bet you don’t get a reply.
When the truth on the 2011 Euro licence finally emerges how do you think UEFA is going to react……not well I suggest.
Their may be severe consequences for all Scottish teams, including the National side, as a result.
They, the SFA, Rangers, the apologists will try to sell this to Joe Public as an hones admin error, or something similar……….Boy , these admin errors keep rearing their head.
Unfortunately for them the time lines have been detailed by the bloggers, the tax debt had been admitted and included as a liability in the Rangers accounts and again we are thankful to the bloggers for highlighting the chicanery around the timing of the issue of those accounts and that a fall back date at the end of June had been added to the rules so that any change in a club’s position WRT to unpaid taxes could be declared.
Three years down the line we find out that the £250k fine levied on Rangers as a result of the LNS enquiry remains unpaid………..as far As I’m aware Rangers did not appeal the LNS enquiry results, hardly surprising given that it was set up to fail, aided and abetted by preposterous evidence given by officials of the SFA, which again thanks to the bloggers is well documented and will be the subject of ridicule for years to come.
Ashley’s attack on the SFA and the forthcoming judicial enquiry could be very revealing. As widely postulated if Ashley’s legal bods can put The Conflicted One in the room when the King F&P discussions were going on, then it’s game over. I would imagine that CO’S EBT payment might be aired by Ashley’s legal team. There may also be reference to the SFA statements that CO had removed himself from all deliberations Rangers.
A question might be asked if King declared his 3 month jail sentence, suspended for 3 years, for contempt of court back in SA?
Big Mike ‘ s team might want to have a look at the cash flow projections that King put before the SFA…………and compare with the current position?
All of this will be but a sideshow when the other court cases kick off………one of those in the dock, I believe, had a penchant for recording conversations!
But Celtic DID win it fair and square…is he actually accusing Larsson and Celtic? If so, isn’t that slander? They’re fair wracking up the criminal charges on themselves….better still, apparently the Currant Bun paper is stating they’re going to be involved in a holiday pay dispute with the loanees come the end of the season…chocolate, raspberry or hundreds and thousands, anyone?