Graeme Souness has given the game away to HMRC with a spectacular own goal confirming that his EBT was made for employment with Rangers (IL).
In November of last year three serving judges agreed with HMRC that the payments made to over 60 individuals was for employment on behalf of the club rather than loans from a trust fund.
The Murray Group then BDO (liquidators of Rangers FC) argued that the payments were discretionary and not contracted but the discovery of side letters during a police raid at Ibrox in 2007 put that argument to bed.
Billy Dodds, Alex Rae and Neil McCann have proved to be evasive in describing their payments from the former football club but today Souness owned up to being paid for scouting work he carried out on the continent.
Clearly misunderstanding the relevance of the question the former Blackburn manager decided to concentrate on the value of his EBT rather than claim that it was in the form of a loan.
“I was doing work for Rangers,” Souness explained. “I’m not being blasé, how much was it? And what was the largest one that someone received? That’s a lot of money isn’t it?
“Well I was in between jobs and I was going to scout players for Glasgow Rangers at that time, on the continent. Does that answer it?”
If Souness was working for Rangers at the time income tax of £12,000 would have been paid to Her Majesty from the £30,000 EBT paid. In answer to Souness’ question his former friend Dave Murray got the highest EBT payment, a total of £6m.
During his time at Blackburn Souness signed Barry Ferguson and Tugay from the club chaired by old his old friend from Edinburgh David Murray.
As manager of Newcastle Souness negotiated an £8m fee for Jean Alain Boumsong six months after he had been signed on a Bosman deal from Auxerre.
Boumsong received an EBT payment of £630,000 for 18 games with the Ibrox club according to documents seen by BBC Scotland.
