Craig Whyte has explained one of the most famous quotes in Scottish football.
Back in November 2010 he was introduced to the Scottish public as the man looking to buy out Dave Murray’s stake in the troubled Rangers Football Club.
For years the Edinburgh based businessman had been trying to offload his stake in the club with a distinct lack of interest in a business that hadn’t recorded a profit in two decades and which was dogged by a tax scandal.
Every prominent Scottish businessman had been sounded out by Murray but incredibly the spotlight turned to Whyte who was described as a billionaire with ‘off the radar wealth’ for added effect.
That claim was quickly trashed by Internet Bampots but the Daily Record persisted with the tag although he was later down-graded to a multi-millionaire followed by ‘highly successful businessman’.
On Friday Whyte finally got to tell his side of the story, on Saturday he gave an interview to Radio Scotland’s Off The Ball programme, the BBC website reported:
Q:Â When [Daily Record journalist] Keith Jackson described you as having “wealth off the radar” [prior to takeover], how did you react to that?
CW:Â I was stunned at that. I remember picking up the paper down at Victoria Station and I was amazed that I had been called a billionaire. It was only later on that day that I found out the story of what actually happened from the PR guys. But I was as surprised as anybody else.
Q:Â So what had happened?
CW: What had happened was that the PR guys I was using in Glasgow had been dealing with the [Daily] Record and had given him [Jackson] a profile of me and it said that my company managed more than £1bn in assets. Of course, managing the assets isn’t the same as owning the assets. It’s completely different. There was no question of me saying I was a billionaire, I never said that. That was just tabloid nonsense.
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The asking price dropped from £30m to £1 by the time Whyte bought out Murray in May 2011. In February 2012 the club went into administration, in June that was followed by liquidation which has still to be completed.