Rangers International Football Club director James Blair has issued a warning to Celtic over any action following the Supreme Court decision on the Big Tax Case.
The former Rangers Football Club, currently in liquidation, were found guilty of not paying tax on payments made to players and officials for over a decade.
While Rangers claimed that it was an Employment Benefit Trust the side letters and other documentation meant that it was straightforward payments that were liable for National Insurance and Income Tax.
Today a group called Club 1872 followed on from Dave King’s statement and made it quite clear what their intentions are.
At the turn of the year Club 1872 had seven directors, six have since resigned leaving Blair as their sole director. Blair has been Company Secretary of RIFC since March 2015.
Issuing his threat Blair states: “Contrary to the line taken by several dishonest media commentators, encouraged predominantly by Peter Lawwell and Celtic Football Club, this result does not mean that Rangers have “broken the law”, “acted illegally”, “cheated” or gained any sporting advantage through the historic use of EBT payments.
“The Lord Nimmo Smith tribunal dealt comprehensively with this matter and, as the SFA has correctly reiterated, is final and binding.
Going off on a tangent for the message board fanatics that shape opinion Blair adds: “Should it be the case that the SPFL do decide to act for the benefit of Celtic, then the clubs represented on that board should be aware that Club 1872, and we are sure Rangers Football Club and the wider Rangers support, will use every legal means necessary to challenge those who promote, support or facilitate such a course of action.
“That will include, but not be limited to, mounting a legal challenge to the SPFL, boycotting publications whose journalists misreport the facts of the matter and demanding SPFL and SFA investigations into any and all dubious actions by those clubs over the period of the last 50 years.
“The investigations we will demand specifically involve, but are not limited to, the actions of several boards, individual board members and employees of Celtic Football Club, across a variety of issues which have been in the public domain for many years but never properly addressed by the football authorities.
We will also demand that the football authorities open multiple investigations and examine in public, and in detail, all deals which allowed Scottish football clubs to write off their debts and the fit and proper status of all majority and joint owners of SPFL clubs. We will not be lectured on integrity, sporting or otherwise, by the clubs involved.
While King’s statement yesterday can be ignored it’s surely the duty of the SFA and SPFL to get Blair to articulate his concerns or be banned for life from being a football club director.
While they are doing that they can explain the continuing role and influence of EBT architects Andrew Dickson, Paul Murray, Alastair Johnston and Dave King in Scottish football.
