stewarty

There's been a raging debate on twitter in the past day or so regarding the current investigation commissioned by the Rangers Board into the allegations made by Craig Whyte and his connection with Charles Green. Writing on ESPN, John DC Gow explained his view that the commission was ill-advised, and only invites negative attention. He argues it also negates the Board's responsibility to protect the club. I can understand this viewpoint to an extent, goodness knows we've been through a lot, but I disagree for a number of reasons. Despite my barrage of tweets in John's direction, twitter is perhaps not the easiest medium to communicate why this is wrong, so here goes.... Given the threatened legal action, the various leaks by Whyte and the ongoing press coverage that has ensued, there is at the very least a case to be answered about whether the transfer of oldco assets to Sevco Scotland was legitimate. Various guarantees were also provided to the SFA that Green's group of investors had no other connections to Whyte, hence why Stewart Regan said yesterday that the allegations were "very serious". The investigation commissioned by the Board is attempting to clear up this mess once and for all. Until this is done, we cannot move forward. Its likely that Whyte will continue in his desperate attempts to sling mud at all and sundry; there is no evidence to suggest that he would stop doing so. I've speculated before about Whyte's motives but its clear he has no regard for the consequences of his actions. He is also a proven liar. But just because Whyte has been proven a liar before, doesn't mean it is also the case in this instance. For every piece of audio Whyte has released, we have a counter-argument from Green and others. Green is not normally short for words but his interview with STV had him floundering. His ego didn't help either. With his inclination towards speaking in outlandish terms, coupled with the ongoing Boardroom powerplays, its no wonder the Board was not prepared to accept Green's word at face value. An independent and objective review of all available evidence was necessary. This type of thing happens every day in business. As an Internal Auditor, I've been involved in carrying out such reviews myself, where there is a need for an organisation to seek an independent review of allegations of fraud or impropriety. But lets be clear here, this isn't an abrogation of duty. Given the sheer complexity of links and allegations, not to mention the links that current Board members and investors have with Whyte and Green, the Board simply is not able to objectively review the information available to it. Unless a forensic review is undertaken, it simply would not be able to say it had taken all reasonable steps to investigate these allegations. Furthermore, Rangers is a public company which is listed on AIM. With that come a number of responsibilities. These are not negotiable, and are a requirement of a company's continued registration. Of the many regulations, which you can read here, the principles of disclosure are noted on page 5, the second paragraph of which reads: "An AIM company must take reasonable care to ensure that any information it notifies is not misleading, false or deceptive and does not omit anything likely to affect the import of such information." All publicly listed companies must make disclosures to the market about any material information which could affect shareholders. Negative publicity, a potential legal claim and the likelihood of an regulatory interventions from the AIM or the SFA all compound to a situation that simply has to be resolved one way or the other for the company to continue its listing. It is very likely that the Board will be having a lot of concerned communications with those regulatory bodies to ask what is going on. Unless the Board can demonstrate that it is taking appropriate steps of its own accord, AIM might well impose sanctions. The SFA might well commission its own review in order to ascertain whether Green has lied to them. I don't know about you, but I'd rather not get involved in another SFA commission. Also, it won’t be too long before Rangers will be carrying out their annual audit. A key risk area for an external auditor is to consider whether a company is a going concern. Whilst Whyte's allegations on the sale of assets to Sevco Scotland continue, will the club's auditor be happy to say that the club is a going concern? What evidence will be available to them to make that assessment? Can you see where I'm going with this? We also need to consider the effect that such damaging allegations and publicity have on the club's ability to market itself and to attract new investment and sponsors. As a sponsor, would you be happy to be associated with a football club that is unable to satisfactorily deal with these matters? I accept it is frustrating seeing the club forking out such a very high amount of money on this investigation. Especially given that we suspect it will not identify any further damaging information. But the value of this happening is our ability to put all of this stuff to bed. Only once this is done, can we say with confidence that Whyte is "at it". We suspect it, but so far cannot prove it conclusively. Even if further information does come out, as damaging as that may or may not be, it simply has to come out, and come out now. We cannot sweep this under the carpet, we must deal with it head on, warts and all.

Welcome aboard Patnabear!

United really are a dishonest and scummy club with that prick Thompson in charge.

So Ahmad recorded his conversation, most likely without Murray's knowledge, and has now passed it to a 3rd party (the sun). Again, most likely without Murray's knowledge. Murray has a case to pursue him for that, methinks.

We shall need to wait and see what BDO say about that tbh.

Lifted from FF, but underlines my point I think. 2013-05-17 â?? Private Eye No. 1340 THE affairs of Worthington Group appear ever more entangled with Craig Whyte and his twice bankrupt partner Aidan Earley. The story so far... Worthington has almost £3m from a group pension fund locked up in the Rangers collapse as a result of a loan that was made before any security was provided by the then Whyte-controlled club. Whyte and Earley's brother had major share stakes in Worthington ahead of the loan. The pension fund is now fighting with the taxman and Rangers' liquidators for the return of its money in a civil action against Whyte's former lawyers, Collyer Bristow. Worthington has provided £250,000 to help finance to a new Whyte venture, Law Financial, which claims it owns a stake in the new Rangers and threatens litigation. Now read on... Last November, Worthington raised £600,000 through a share and convertible loan stock issue. In January, a debenture was issued to secure the £475,000 loan stock. That charge was issued to a new company, Renatus Capital. The only listed director and shareholder of Renatus is Sherri Ellison. She was formerly a director or company secretary of a series of Whyte or Earley companies. The holders of the loan stock could on conversion become the largest Worthington shareholder; they also have a first charge on the Worthington assets. Presumably that £475,000 provided to Worthington by Renatus or associates has helped fund the £250,000 Worthington has invested in Law Financial.

So Hearts should be treated any differently to us should it come to it? Nah, sorry Archie. Not buying that for a moment. The sought to stick the knife in our backs along with the rest of the SPL. That ship has sailed.

Cheers guys. I'm off to fight some zombies to take my mind off things.

Making sense of the stramash that is Rangers' corporate affairs over the last few years is enough to make any sane observer turn to drink - there are so many strands in this ever evolving and relentless saga. I'm not going to pretend that I am able to explain everything but I spotted a couple of things in the past day or two that got me wondering. A couple of months ago Ticketus won a court action against Craig Whyte in relation to the advance loan of future season ticket revenues that he subsequently used to pay the club's debt to Lloyds Banking Group. The court agreed with Ticketus that Whyte lied in his Directors disclosure, which was a requirement of the deal - namely that he did not disclose that he had previously been struck off as a Director. The judge noted evidence presented which showed that Whyte's own solicitor and pointed this question out to Whyte as being one of interest to him. In the judge's summary, he essentially called out Whyte for having a flimsy defence with little legal merit. As a result, Whyte was ordered to repay some £17m in funding to Ticketus, which related to the personal guarantees he provided. The case didn't even make it to trial, such was the damning nature of the evidence. This is par for the course with Whyte though, as even a quick check of his recent court battles will show. A few weeks later we have some recordings released by Whyte of conversations he held with Charles Green in the acquisiton of the oldco assets. These clips were short and didn't reveal the full extent of the conversations held. This was done to provide maximum damage to Green's credibility. We then find out shortly afterwards that Whyte had established a company around February/March, for which he sold around a quarter of its shares to Worthington Group. Laughably, part of this deal was the book and film rights for Whyte's story. In return, Worthington Group agreed to fund Whyte's supposed court action against Green for the wrongful sale of Ranger's assets to Sevco Scotland/Sevco 5088. Today we find out that Ticketus have petitioned the High Court in the British Virgin Islands to liquidate Whyte's company Liberty Capital, in an attempt to recover the £17m they are owed. This is the same Liberty Capital who also have a share of the Worthington Group. Essentially Whyte and is cohorts have a say in all of these companies. We also see the quite obvious release of stacks of email conversations and audio clips by Whyte to an anonymous blogger, Charlotte Fakes. Again, this is designed to create maximum damage to the key players in Whyte's saga. Possibly to try and get a pay off. But when we join all of these dots together what do we get apart from a sore head? In my view we have a blatant attempt by Whyte to create as much distance as possible between him and the money he owes. The longer he can string this along, the longer he attempts to evade what must surely be a potential jail sentence. This was further underlined with a story in the past couple of days about a court being unable to cite Whyte as a witness for a case he has brought against some people he claims stole items from his Castle Grant home. Essentially Craig Whyte has no money. Every deal he seems to put together, from the Ticketus deal, to the Worthington Group's funding of his court case, is an attempt to get other people to fund his scheming. Its been said many times but quite why any newspaper takes any information from this pyscopath I have no idea. Why the use of the word psycopath? Well, its someone who is incapable of feeling guilt, remorse or empathy for their actions. There are many more dots that could be joined together. I may be wrong on some or all counts, but the quicker the long arm of the law catches up with Craig Thomas Whyte, the quicker we can begin to sort out this sorry mess.

This Charlotte Fakeover chap now tweeting: "I have 1000's of items to review, should the task be too large, I shall consider a wikileaks type dump." Seems more and more obvious that he's been given a dump of documents from Whyte. Question is, how many are genuine?

Thought he makes a lot of very pertinent observations though.

Yeah. He's using the Scotsman which is interesting. Is there a paper out there that wonder pander to his bullshit?

Hmmm. Released just as there's talk of Green being cleared by this investigation. Further muddying of the waters... Wonder who's leaked this time?

Me, Juffery and our Sheepy pal who came along for the banter drove down from Edinburgh but didn't set off till almost mid-day. Didn't arrive till around 4.30-5pm. Remember sending a text to Frankie to meet up but we didn't have time in the end. Dropped the car at a Tesco carpark in the southside of Manchester. Taxi into town, then found the nearest off sales and bought a couple of crates of warm Fosters. Into the city centre to soak up the atmosphere and have a few scoops. Then into Albert Square trying to watch the game which ultimately ended in disappointment. Insanely few toilets provided which resulted in guys pissing anywhere. After the game we went for a curry at a wee place just below street level at Albert Square. Despite repeated attempts to pay by asking for the bill, we eventually decide to walk out and were waived on our way by the restaurant staff. The free curry certainly helped raise spirits a little. Caught a bus back to the car, singing the Jean-Claude Darcheville and the Carlos Cuellar songs in full voice to the bemused mooks of locals. Slept the night in the car at Tesco Car park before making our way home the next day, and to the tragic news of Tommy Burns passing away. Some bittersweet memories, but a great 36 hours nonetheless.

I suspect things will fast forward once the investigation reveals its findings. As frustrating as it is, this is all just jockeying for position. If I get time I'll do a post on it, but Rangers need a good internal audit function. I will do it for much cheapness!

Bell seems to have good pedigree. If Jim Stewart thinks he's a prospect then that'll do for now. Lets judge the guy on his performances rather than slate him because he's coming from Kilmarnock or because he's slightly smaller than what people think a keeper should be. I don't recall anyone moaning about Stefan Klos' height. He was 6ft as well.

Think the word is that he has now left the club. I'd doubt he's getting a deal unless on greatly reduced terms. He leaves with thanks but we can't afford to be sentimental. Now, when's Boyd, miller, smith and Nacho signing!!

Nothing wrong with a bowl of muesli!

Not convinced by that. Seems odd to me.

Puzzled as to why this investor wants anonymity.

There's a fine line between arrogance and confidence. When you mix confidence with a winners mentality, its only natural that those who don't share your success will point you out as arrogant. Not a hard and fast rule but it works for me.

Reading Fury (Chris Graham) on twitter, McLaughlin is the go-to man for Media House. This is itself puzzling given that the club also use their services if i recall correctly.

Whatever is said about the suitability of the Easdales, and I'm going to hold my counsel for the time being, why on earth do they think giving an interview to Chris McLaughlin will in any way persuade supporters to get on board?

But maybe the breakfast news will bring further details of a stock exchange notification.

That maybe he hasn't actually been subject to a vote of confidence. If it had happened, I can't see any justification for there not being a swift notification to the stock exchange given its relevance to shareholders. The fact it's come from McLaughlin at the BBC, and given we have strong suspicions about his sources (Green/Ahmad), who's to say its not yet anyone unverified smear tactic on Murray. This is all speculation of course, but at this time it's no more or less than the information being reported.