SPFL appoint new legal team
General Sport - Leaders Sport Summit 2012 - Stamford Bridge - 11/10/12 (From left to right) Karen Espelund, Executive Committee Member of UEFA, Neil Doncaster, chief Executive Officer of the Scottish Premier league and Heather Rabbatts, Non-Executive Director of The FA during a talk called "Governance: Are you serious?" Mandatory Credit: Action Images / Paul Childs Livepic
The SPFL has appointed a new legal team as the shadow of Resolution 12 lengthens over Scottish football.
Governance of the Scottish game has become a joke as legal gymnastics is applied to try and prevent the truth about generations of cheating from Ibrox being made public.
The Nimmo Smith enquiry ignored five instances of unlawful EBT payments being made to Rangers (IL) players after shifting the date of the enquiry to avoid dealing with Discount Option Scheme used to entice and pay Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer.
As liquidation followed administration at Rangers the SPL and SFA then carved up the notorious Five Way Agreement before welcoming back, one by one, most of the directors that led the club into liquidation and declaring them fit and proper.
Sadly not one club has raised their voice to question the governance of the game as the SPL and SPFL stumbled from disaster to disaster in tandem with Rod McKenzie from Harper MacLeod.
McKenzie is being retained on a part-time basis to explain some of the gymnastics with four new law firms brought in as the SPFL tries to prepare for an era of fairness blaming the old regime for two decades of cheating the fans.
Brabners LLP, Fladgate LLP, Gunnercooke LLP and Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP will form a new legal panel with Neil Doncaster predictably delighted by the development.
He told the SPFL website: “I would like to thank the team at Harper Macleod for their advice over the past 20 years. I am looking forward to working with a new team of legal advisers, which includes some of the best legal minds in sports law from across the UK.”
In 2011 the SFA granted Rangers (IL) a licence to play in Europe despite having overdue social payables (£2.8m tax bill).
Neither the SPL or SFA carried out any investigations into the contracts registered by Rangers (IL) for players which were well below the figures quoted at their previous clubs.
When Barry Ferguson left Blackburn Rovers for Rangers (IL) in 2005 his contract was for £8,000 per week, at that time Celtic had a number of players on £30,000 per week with full Income Tax and National Insurance paid to Her Majesty.