A website exposing the timeline of the licence issue between the SFA and Rangers (IL) has come under attack.
Sports Integrity Initiative caught the attention on social media yesterday but as word spread the site appears to have come under attack.
SII was able to provide a detailed timeline of the case claiming that the SFA and Rangers (IL) were aware in February 2011 that the tax bill was no longer under discussion but overdue.
Until now the SFA’s stance on the issue was that everything was fine at 30 March but that was only an initial date with the full audit required on 30 June- a date that no one inside the SFA seems willing to consider,
It appears that no member club is prepared to challenge the events of 2011 where it seems that the priority at Ibrox was to ignore a ten year old tax bill in order to gain a crack at playing in the Champions League.
Six months after Ally McCoist’s team lost to Malmo Rangers were put in administration followed by liquidation.
Had the SFA acted on the tax bill the club may have been saved.
Fortunately details of the SII article were saved with key dates and accusations shown below.
UEFA was initially notified of the complaint in February, however was sent detail regarding the specific allegations in March. A brief summary is as follows:
• That as Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) considered Rangers PLC to have an overdue tax liability in February 2011, SFA officials knew about and withheld knowledge of overdue payables at Rangers which would have resulted in the club being ineligible for a UEFA licence for the 2011/12 season;
• That Rangers PLC accepted its £2.8 million liability to HMRC on 21 March 2011, ahead of the 31 March 2011 deadline stipulated by the UEFA Club Licensing and Financial Fair Play (CLFFP) Regulations.
• That the SFA ignored its own rules by allowing Dave King and Paul Murray to become
Directors of Rangers Limited in 2015, despite both having been on the board of Directors at the Rangers PLC in 2012, when the club entered liquidation. Article 10.2(j) of the SFA’s Articles of Associationprevented anyone from becoming a Director at a Scottish club if, during the previous five years, they had been a Director at a club that entered insolvency;
• That the SFA broke its own rules by allowing Dave King to become a Director of the Rangers Limited in March 2015, despite his pleading guilty in 2013 to 41 of 322 charges of tax fraud brought by the South African Revenue Service (SARS);
• That the President of the SFA at the time, Campbell Ogilvie, misled the Lord Nimmo Smith (LNS) inquiry into the financial collapse of Rangers by claiming that he had no involvement in administering an Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) whilst working as Company Secretary at the club;
• That the date of the LNS inquiry, which was initially supposed to start in 1999, was changed to 2000-2011. This had the effect of excluding one of the two offshore schemes allegedly set up by Rangers PLC to pay players and staff whilst avoiding tax.
• That the SFA allowed Campbell Ogilvie to continue as SFA President during the ‘independent’ LNS inquiry, despite the fact that he had served as a Director of Rangers PLC during the period being investigated.
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