The worst kept secret in Scottish football was confirmed when it was announced that Rangers (In Liquidation) had cheated Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for eight years.
Every trophy lifted by Barry Ferguson, Lorenzo Amoruso, Fernando Ricksen, David Weir and Steven Davis was the result of denying Her Majesty her richly deserved revenue and custom.
The judgement states ‘A scheme involving payments to various trusts set up in respect of executives and footballers employed by the former Rangers Football Club amounted to “a mere redirection of emoluments or earnings” and was accordingly “subject to income tax”‘.
Rather than pay their fair share towards maintaining hospitals, schools and the armed forces, as every club they competed did willingly, the club from Ibrox were ensuring better cars, holidays, WAGS and wardrobes for players they couldn’t afford otherwise.
Dundee, Falkirk, Motherwell, Queen of the South and Ayr United are among the clubs that lost cup finals to a shameless outfit unwilling to play on the same level playing field as their competitors.
Tellingly, in this mornings announcement from the Scottish Judiciary website Lord Drummond Young explained: “Furthermore, so far as the footballers are concerned, at least, it seems to us that if bonuses had not been paid they might well have taken their services elsewhere.
“We realise that the fifth respondent [RFC 2012] was in, potentially, a difficult financial position, competing for good players in an international market where other countries may not have the same rigorous approach to taxation as the United Kingdom.
“Nevertheless, the law is clear: the payments made in respect of footballers were in our view derived from their employment and thus the payments were emoluments or earnings.”
As well as cheating every club in Scotland from 2001-2009 Rangers (IL) also fielded players in European ties where their full income wasn’t declared to the football authorities.
In a separate case, known as the wee tax case, the club was ended up with a £6m bill for untaxed payments made to Ronald de Boer and Tore Andre Flo.
It is unclear whether the SFA will review trophies won during that period, if normal UEFA and FIFA principles are applied Celtic won their 15th consecutive title last season.
This morning’s announcement came after the new club at Ibrox produced their audited accounts for the 2014/15 season which included a going concern that they won’t survive the current season.
CLICK HERE for the full ruling
Yyyyyeeeeeeeesssssssssss !
JUSTICE
This day just gets better and better !
Jingle bells !
HH
A fantastic day for all fair minded fans and tax paying clubs in Scotland.
Attention and pressure must immediately be turned on to the SFA!
All trophies won during their cheating years, MUST be deleted from their concluded history.
Celtic must make a statement!
It’s a good first step. But Justice will only be when the titles are stripped, the cheated clubs financially compensated, the EBTs repaid, and the perpetrators of the crime fired and jailed.
all those years of hurt must be paid back with title stripping.
Sure is a great for for all the tax paying clubs like Monti has said BUT this being Scotland
Any pressure turned on the SFA will come to” SFA”……….sure wish Celtic would make a statement but that wont happen……..the daily rags are getting their stories/excuses made up by the minute.
HH
CHEATS NEVER WIN ………SCOTLAND’S SHAME.
Pressure must now be put on the SFA to overturn these Cheated Titles..They can’t be seen to hiding now..The must come out now and make a decision..
To all the EBT recipients,
What’s that coming over the hill, is it the TAX MAN !
HH
i just happened to notice that the judgement referred to ‘ the former rangers club’ , wonder if the smsm pick that up.
The ramifications from todays judgement will echo throughout all levels of Scottish society.
The willingness of so many other bodies to go along with this and to actively help in keeping the secrets has to be fully investigated and dealt with.
Proper redress and adequate compensation should be made to all the clubs who were cheated out of trophies by the illegal activities of this club.
The guilty should be named and shamed.
HERE WE GO SIXTEEN IN A ROW
Hahaha a celtic website making up this story ohh fucking dear deluded to say the least. Beat the tax case and the hard appeal TWICE. And as for ebt payments loads.of teams used them including celtic!
Mr Sevco
You lost the tax case today meaning it wipes out the two previous judgments.
Your directors and chairman are facing a prison sentence.
£1brokes needs 20 million plus maintenance work carried out on it.
Mike Ashley wants his 5 million back, and has a 7 year rolling contract that’s water tight.
You need external finance just to keep you going, and have posted loses of 7.5 million today.
And your so thick you come on here and say haha, it really isn’t hard to see why everybody has made a fortune out of you lot. ZOMBIES
HH
WELL SAID
Deluded? Seriously? That’s a bit rich coming from somebody who thinks that this has all been made up on a Celtic website, never mind that it’s being reported by every news outlet in the country, your convinced it’s ‘aw made up by they Sellic fans who are pure jealous that we ur the maste successful club in the world’. Hahahaha!!!!
Have you actually paid any attention to the judges verdict on THAT specific tax case today, or did you just stick your fingers in your ears and let your mind wander off to that fairytale land of make believe where you and your fellow bears go because you can’t handle the reality of your clubs liquidation.
Well story time is over Mr Rangers, reality just sharpened it’s big sharp pointy teeth and bit you and your fellow bears right on the arse! 😀
Bye bye rangers bye bye newco
A zillionaire is about to step in.
Wulz spot on ! If the EBT are loans, get all the ballbags to repay them back…… Ahhh thats right, the former club called Rangers dont exist any more…. Ahhh, only when it suits them to keep their titles…..not for paying off their debts. You cant take the knickers off a ‘ Bear’s Arse’ haha , cant have it both ways. Let the bells ring out for Christmas. Keep The Faith.
If those payments were loans then the administrator/receiver should have pursued their repayment. There’s a distinct lack of activity on that front so it proves EBT were paid as wages/salaries/bonuses. Next step is for HMRC to pursue the tax from those players and executives for their payments received under those schemes.
11 year if yae count the already admitted tae Dos scheme they operated from 98.
Cheating hun bastards
Time for those responsible to be punished.
This all happened on SDM ‘ S watch.
At various times Dave King and Paul Murray were on the board.
Campbell Ogilve was on the board, subsequently he moved to Hampden and ended up as President of the SFA.
He had by that time pocketed £96, 000 of EBT payments.
He had wide knowledge of how the scheme operated and who were the beneficiaries.
He knew about the side letters, he knew that the payments were not registered with the SFA.
He did nothing, said nothing.
Stood back and watched LNS going round in circles with documents hidden from his sight and no distinction made clear to him between the WTC and BTC.
Fed up repeating myself on this but anyone with an ounce of integrity would either have resigned from his position immediately when his EBT payment was made public or paid it back with interest.
Given that neither of these things came to pass you can make up your own mind as to his character.
Conflicted never covered his situation adequately.
Remember this guy also held shares in Rangers and Hearts when he was employed by the SFA and his idea of making things right was to sign them over to his wife.
By the way Campbell have you repaid your loan in full, or in part?
Remember Chic Young commenting on the situation as he presented Ogilve as one of the great administrators in Scottish football history then informed us, before CO’S payment details were made public, that what he had received would only cover the cost of a decent night out in Glasgow!!!!
When I think back to that it always makes me wonder who was lying……..was it Chic on behalf of his source or was Chic duped by his source?
The media will close ranks and the SFA will do SFA and hope it all goes away……
The wagons are circling already,
Watched Billy Dodds on the so called BBC the other night getting his dig in about Celtic having a bigger budget that (Aberdeen) and all the other clubs…..let me tell you something Billy…Celtics bigger budget was honestly earned and they paid the taxes that were due….of course the BBC did not press him on that point.
HH
I have no axe to grind, being a Raith Rovers supporter, but agree with everything you say. If Rangers had taken the Fergus McCann route, they might be a club to be reckoned with today with a healthy budget (And quality Players) but greed was the order of the day at Ibrox and now the supporters are in total denial. They still think they are European Championship material and not in the Division where they belong.
What can you say Cheating Hun Barstewards!
No shame????????
MR SEVCO WILL BE SUPPORTING HIS THIRD TEAM IN THREE YEARS SHORTLY HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWL
Sky news have been very coy on this story ,the fact they employ Thierry Henry may suggest they think blatant cheating is ok providing they get away with it, All those clubs who lost silverware to the guilty years of the club running out of ibrox should have new medals struck , there is many a professional who may have got only one chance of a medal in their career and advantage has now been seen to have been made, Do the right thing and make it right.