Channel 4 News have claimed that former Rangers Chief Executive Martin Bain was paid his 2005 bonus through an Employee Benefit Trust.
After being cleared by their legal team at the last minute the explosive report made a number of allegations relating to the controversial EBT scheme that have cast a shadow over the very future of the club.
Tax expert Paul Baxendale-Walker is believed to have introduced the EBT scheme to Rangers but was quick to distance himself from the way that Rangers operated the scheme.
The crux of the issue appears to that discretionary payments and bonuses are legal but any contracted payments must be taxed in the normal manner.
Baxendale-Walker told Alex Thompson of Channel 4 news: “Somebody obviously advised Rangers on the constitution of this employee benefits trust. And what that somebody would have to have done is refer to my book or at least referred to the principles in it. And then Rangers as a company went and did something else. This is why there is a tax case.”
Bain became Rangers Chief Executive during the EBT years and appears to have made a clear breach of the guidelines for using EBT’s.
According to Channel 4 news they have witnessed a document in which Bain wrote:”at the end of the meeting I gave her back the letter addressed to me from you that stated my contractual increase for her to shred.”
The last sitting of the First Tier Tribunal was in January with a ruling expected in April or May.
Former Rangers owner David Murray has defended the use of EBT’s vigorously and is confident that the tribunal will find the payments to be non-contractual.
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Tic toc tic!
At last a bit of unbiased reporting and some good work from channel 4.Pity they never dug deeper into the role of SFA and SPL and there so called investigations into Rankers.
ye freenz of hunnery ye ‘r’ doomed, say thy prayers ye son of the singers of sash for even thy royal family ‘r’ doomed yet again & again & again & moreover I say ye ‘r’cursed 4 ever &a day
This has not been reported in the Daily Record yet!!! It astonishes me that RFC are still denying they did nothing wrong like I said all along it will all come out and when it does RFC will cease Whyte will walk away with a share of the funds from the firesale and the rest will be history hail hail
The potential impact of Alex Thomson’s investigation is massive.
For some who have read RTC (I was going to give it up for lent as its consuming most of my spare time) some of the relevations may not be new.
It’s also difficult for a news team to present facts in a simple and balanced way without over complicating the issue. They also need to keep the editorial interesting to a standard viewer.
As a result of the few minutes we watched last night there are a number of areas to be explored further, in my view underpinned by Bains e mails.
Apart from who they were sent to and when they were sent, they show a wilfull & deliberate attempt to circumvent personal & corporate responsibilities regarding tax.
The level of arrogance, stupidity or both to record his views in writing is jaw droppIng!
From a footballing governance perspective this is just the beginning, the starter pistol has just gone off.
Last nights revelations will turn the heat up on a number of people.
My own personal thoughts turn to the now silent First Minister who was so vocal in expressing his desire to give those who deliberately with hold tax special treatment. If he has any personal integrity he will feel embarrassed though I suspect he won’t.
As something of a side issue I got a laugh reading that the Ragers fighting funders being furious with Regan, claiming they were not being given more assistance.
They just don’t get it do they.
Quoting directly from the last line of the brilliant animation “explaining debt to a ….”
“I geeev up”
For years they have been getting away with anything & everything but now the media down south are getting involved they will be scared because they can’t hide it under the carpet or rely on the Scottish press keeping quiet.
Surely this has got to be on the front page of the Scottish papers tomorrow. This is the first ‘smoking gun’. Murray will surely be stripped of his worthless knighthood now. Did his mate ‘Fred the Shred’ give him thieving, lying and cheating tips. What a collection of scumbags they are, all associated with this cesspit of a club.