The popular Celtic message board Kerrydale Street has published what appears to be the full letter sent by Peter Lawwell to Stewart Regan in May 2012 about Celtic’s concerns over ‘EBT’ payments at Ibrox.
Crucially the letter was copied in to Gianni Infantino of UEFA who last summer confirmed that the current club from Ibrox won’t be punished for the rule breaches of the old club currently being liquidated.
By alerting UEFA to their concerns Celtic have made it clear to Regan that they are prepared to take the issue outside of Scotland.
The detail in the letter makes it clear that should guilt be proven in terms of players being ineligible through undeclared payments there is an expectation that retrospective punishments will be applied.
While Rangers claimed to use EBTs in July the Supreme Court ruled against that interpretation because of side letters that guaranteed the payments rather than issuing discretionary loans.
Either way the payments weren’t disclosed to the SFA and SPL with registration issues controlled by Campbell Ogilvie and Andrew Dickson.
Ogilvie went on to become President of the SFA with Dickson now a member of the SFA Congress which monitors governance matters.
The letter from Lawwell was prompted by the award winning BBC programme ‘The Men That Sold The Jersey.
Mark Daly was able to list a large number of players who were paid through ‘EBTs’ guaranteed by side letters. SFA and SPL rules require all payments to players to be declared to the football authorities but if Rangers (IL) had did that they couldn’t have claimed to HMRC that they were discretionary loans.
The letter published appears to be the first on the subject and covers every area at the time.
A number of other questionable decisions have been made since including the bizarre move to give a five year old club the domestic honours of the club that started off in 1873.
With the extent of Celtic’s concerns over governance going public other clubs may find themselves under pressure from fans to question Regan into setting up a Judicial Panel.
Today’s development was picked up on by The Sun and The Scotsman but so far BBC Scotland, STV and the Daily Record have avoided the matter.
CLICK HERE for the BBC list of EBT payments
CLICK HERE for the letter from Celtic.