To use a phrase favoured by himself, this morning Stewart Regan is heavily conflicted.
The six year issue over the UEFA licence awarded to Rangers in 2011 is very much in the spotlight after the evidence presented by Donald McIntyre at the Craig Whyte fraud trial yesterday.
Under UEFA rules, in an attempt to create some sort of level playing field, they insist that clubs competing in their competitions are upto date with the tax authorities.
If you owe millions to a local car dealer that’s a private arrangement, the tax authorities are something different.
In court yesterday McIntyre admitted that the tax bill arrived in November 2010, the SFA accepted the Rangers (IL) licence application on 31 March 2010. No overdue tax was declared.
That act and the failure to carry out follow up action gave the Ibrox club a crack at the Champions League and the chance to bring in £20m- money badly needed to keep the wolf from the door.
@BBCAndrewBlack i think i will leave this here pic.twitter.com/1C1gXyVBCF
— Only4Togo (@jduffin24) April 24, 2017
Stewart Regan speaking in 2013 to the BBC, on the award of the UEFA licence to Rangers in 2011. https://t.co/j6j9qMSpuN
— CelticResearch (@CelticResearch) April 25, 2017
From November onwards the ‘wee tax case’ was the immediate priority at Ibrox.
It had been ignored for long enough and could have paid off the previous summer if the board had acted in the interests of shareholders and not given in to Walter Smith’s demands to sign Nikica Jelavic and James Beattie. Vladimir Weiss was added for extra comfort.
Had the threat of no UEFA licence been hovering Rangers would reluctantly have paid the wee tax case, Jelavic wouldn’t have been signed and the SPL title almost certainly won by Celtic.
The current club from Ibrox have Dave King and Paul Murray as directors, they were directors of the old club that put success over every other club ahead of paying tax to provide a level playing field across Scottish football.
Andrew Dickson was the club administrator, the go-between with the football authorities, the man who registered the contracts and kept back details of the additional payments that allowed players such as Barry Ferguson to leave Blackburn for Rangers in 2005 for a salary of £8,000 per week. No one raised a question. Dickson is a member of the Scottish FA Football Regulatory Advisory Group.
Yesterday’s evidence from McIntyre crystallised the situation, to use another phrase favoured by Regan.
Unless King, Murray and Dickson are called in to Hampden this week to explain why the wee tax case wasn’t disclosed in the 30 March 2010 UEFA application then it’s Stewart Regan and the SFA office bearers that are now heavily conflicted.
King, Murray and Dickson have their finger prints all over the 2017 UEFA licence application which is backed by un-audited accounts in carries debt three times the amount allowed by UEFA’s Financial Fair Play.
