The SFA have backed out of punishing Rangers/Sevco for the rule breaches in getting a UEFA licence in 2011/12 and will have to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The hope will now be that the matter is time barred so that we can ‘all move along’ for the good of Scottish football.
Last September after a welter of information became public at the Craig Whyte trial the SFA reluctantly referred the UEFA licence issue to their in-house Compliance Officer.
In May two Notices of Complaint were issued to the current Ibrox club with the hearing held at Hampden on June 26.
The crux of the matter was that Rangers (IL) were overdue with tax bills to HMRC that they hoped could be met by playing in the group phase of the Champions League.
UEFA rules insist that clubs must have no overdue social payables, this is to save clubs from the ‘business model’ of relying on next season’s prize money to pay last season’s bills.
Dave Murray perfected the model for a number of seasons.
From November 2010 the so-called wee tax case had produced a bill of £2.8m relating to the undeclared payments made to Tore Andre Flo and Ronald de Boer. No football sanctions were ever applied by the SFA or SPFL.
UEFA have critical dates of March 31 and June 30 for clubs and their football associations to confirm that participants don’t have overdue payables. The Ibrox tax bill had been overdue since November 2010 with Dave King, Alastair Johnston and Paul Murray as directors. Football Administrator Andrew Dickson was on the SFA Licence Committee.
Today the SFA announced:
This preliminary issue raised by Rangers FC challenged the jurisdiction of the Scottish FA’s Judicial Panel Disciplinary Tribunal to hear the case, and contended that the Notice of Complaint must be determined by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Having received submissions on 26 June the Judicial Panel Disciplinary Tribunal have issued a decision upholding the preliminary issue raised by the club. The Judicial Panel Disciplinary Tribunal proposes to continue consideration of the complaint until parties consider next steps and terms of reference for any remit to CAS.
Had the SFA applied UEFA rules properly Rangers (IL) would have had to pay HMRC or Celtic would have been entered into the Champions League qualifiers.
Rangers (IL) lost out to Malmo in the Champions League then Maribor in the Europa League.
In August 2011 HMRC sent Sheriff Officers to Ibrox for the unpaid tax, in September the football club stopped paying income tax and national insurance to HMRC.
Rangers went into administration in February 2012 and were put into liquidation four months later when Her Majesty rejected their offer of a CVA.
