Rangers Tax Case has returned to twitter after the Ibrox Tribute Act were named for their involvement in a price fixing cartel.
The announcement this morning from the Competition and Markets Authority met with some predictable responses as STV and BBC claimed that it was only allegations against the club.
That view was rather undermined by Elite Sports and JD Sports admitting their role in hiking up the price of tops from £55 to £60. Realising the seriousness of the charges and the consequences the two sports firms have admitted their guilt in order to minimise the financial penalties.
Remember all those “we have legal advice” statements about old Rangers’ tax affairs?
This has the same kind of energy. pic.twitter.com/x6y2tFxFKF
— Rangers Tax-Case (@rangerstaxcase) June 7, 2022
I am sceptical of it amounting to much. As we saw with Dave King’s flouting of takeover laws, enforcement just isn’t the done thing in these times.
— Rangers Tax-Case (@rangerstaxcase) June 7, 2022
At Ibrox they are taking a familiar stance of deny and double down. That policy didn’t work well for the old club when they denied operating schemes of disguised remuneration despite HMRC having the documentation following a police raid on Ibrox over an unrelated matter.
Dave King operated similar policies of doing whatever he liked then getting legal ‘experts’ to defend him until the inevitable.
The Takeover Committee stuck to their convictions to cold shoulder the South African based ‘businessman’ out the door. King applied similar tactics in his battle with Sports Direct, recently it was announced that that deal had been settled with no crowing from Ibrox about the outcome.
A forensic appraisal of Ibrox accounts is surely required of the football and tax authorities.