Whyte’s court appearance set to spill the beans on Ibrox shambles
The former billionaire is due to appear in court today with his lawyer warning that he has accumulated more evidence than the Lockerbie enquiry.
Charles Green’s appearance at Livingston Police Station yesterday through the issue back into the spotlight with Whyte reporting to Govan Police Station later in the day. Dave Whitehouse of administrators Duff & Phelps was also arrested and is expected in court this morning.
Formal charges could provide a body blow to the current company run by Dave King in exile with the trail going back to Dave Murray who sold the club to Mr Whyte for £1 in May 2011 to scenes of rejoicing across darkest Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Govan.
Today’s charges will reveal the precise extent of the police investigation but with the Charlotte Fakes twitter account revealing Mr Whyte’s habit of recording every conversation there will be no shortage of evidence to support the former billionairre’s case.
Last night Paul Kavanagh, Mr Whyte’s lawyer, revealed: “Craig is surprised to have been asked to come in, but he has been happy to do so.
“He has attended voluntarily and will answer any questions put to him, just as he has done in the past.
“At the moment he genuinely doesn’t know what the police want to speak to him about, though clearly it is in connection with Rangers.
“All I can say at this point is that my client is keen for this case to be heard so he can clear his name and show that he hasn’t done anything wrong.”
Kavanagh added: “I think this is going to be one of the biggest cases we have ever seen, certainly in the last 30 years or so.
“In terms of the amount of material and the depth of that material, it could be bigger than Lockerbie. It obviously isn’t as important as Lockerbie, but it is huge in terms of the amount of information.
“I now have 100,000 sheets of paper sitting in the office containing all the information that has been disclosed by the Crown. There is an enormous amount of information that has been gathered in terms of witness statements and other data.
“My client is confident however that he has done nothing wrong and he wants Rangers fans to see that. So he is keen for things to progress as quickly as possible and answer the questions put to him.”
With the £5.5m asset sale engineered between Duff and Phelps likely to be at the centre of proceedings the whole future of the Sevco project could be at risk. That deal was done between Duff & Phelps and Sevco 5088, Mr Green is then believed to have transferred the assets to Sevco Scotland cutting out Mr Whyte.
Within weeks of that deal Mr Green was claiming that the new company had assets of over £80m while HMRC and hundreds of other creditors were left out of pocket.
The current operation from Ibrox remains without a line of credit other than crisis loans from shareholders, has no nominated adviser, no exchange for share trading while the accounts to 30 June 2015 are likely to carry a going concern warning should an auditor be found to take over from Deloitte.
Court action is likely to make for uncomfortable viewing for Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan who created the secretive five way agreement with Mr Green and David Moorhouse of Duff and Phelps to parachute the new club into the league set up.
