Green accuses Neil Doncaster
An SPL commission will sit today to draw up the framework for the investigation into payments made to players through EBT’s.
A decision is expected this month on the First Tier Tribunal but that looks at a separate issue regarding how Rangers used if the EBT scheme. EBT’s were legal if used in a discretionary manner with HMRC claiming that they were set up and used as a tax avoidance scheme and included in contracts agreed with players between 2000 and 2011.
The SPL investigation is less complex and simply needs to find out if players received payments that weren’t declared in the contracts lodged with the SFA and SPL. If it is proved that players had side contracts then all matches involving those players could be reversed to 0-3 and lead to titles being stripped from the soon to be liquidated club.
Following Rangers move into administration in February Doncaster attempted every move possible to ensure that the club remained in the SPL at one stage.
Showing the same grasp for reality that he displayed steering Norwich City into League One Doncaster even claimed that there was little difference between administration and liquidation as they were just different ways of shedding debt.
Doncaster worked closely with SFA counterpart Stewart Regan to provide the Ibrox side with as soft a landing as possible with Green claiming that the SPL chief repeatedly stated that he wasn’t interested in stripping titles won during the EBT era.
In a statement issued yesterday Green revealed: “What compounds the breathtaking hypocrisy of the SPL in this whole saga, is that the SFA, the SPL and us – as the new owners – took part in numerous discussions regarding the new company’s league status during which it was made clear that a deal was there to be done where ‘the EBT issue’ would be dealt with as part of a package of sanctions which would be implemented in return for membership of the SFA and a place in either the SPL or Division One.
“We do not accept that people who are willing to come to an agreement on such matters then have a right to instigate a full blown inquisition when matters do not unfold as they thought they would.
“In our view, it beggars belief that an authority which can be heavily involved in these discussions to the point that the Chief Executive Neil Doncaster repeatedly stated he was not interested in stripping titles from Rangers can lurch from that position to setting up its own Commission under the chairmanship of Lord Nimmo Smith.
“I must make it clear that we are not questioning for a moment the integrity of Lord Nimmo Smith and his colleagues but we believe the SPL have been hypocritical in their approach to this matter.
“Quite apart from their negotiations with our consortium, I know the SPL were well advanced in their discussions with another bidder and his representatives where EBT issues were raised and there was again an understanding that the EBT issue could be dealt with by agreement if new owners were to take over at Ibrox.
“Why is the SPL rushing to judgement now when it has been sitting on the matter for two years? Their haste is particularly difficult to understand when the tax tribunal judgement is imminent.”
With the investigation going public today it’s highly unlikely that Doncaster will respond to Green’s claims.
Last month the Ibrox chief suggested that the SPL must have been drunk or incompetent when dealing with footballing debts of Rangers before suggesting that he may become Chief Executive of the SPL when his Ibrox mission is completed.
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