Leggat - HUNT HOTS UP FOR ROGUES WHO RUINED RANGERS

[ian1964 10,448]

THE rogues and rascals who ruined Rangers will be spending an uneasy Christmas. For they know it may be their last before being banged up.

 

I can reveal today that the big hitters appointed by HMRC, London firm, BDO, are already hot on the trail of the bad guys who took Rangers right to the very blink of oblivion.

 

And they are sifting through all the paperwork â?? both the on-line and the old fashioned sort â?? in order to find the electronic and paper trail which will lead them to the doors of the guilty men.

 

One thing I can already tell you from a well placed source, is that BDO boss Malcolm Cohen is staggered at the way the Craig Whyte appointed administrators, the already seriously under investigation Duff and Phelps, conducted their business.

 

The phrase used to me was that the BDO men think some of Duff and Phelpsâ?? conduct beggars belief.

 

Once again, from a source close to someone who has had dealings with the BDO hotshots, they are on a different planet professionally from Duff and Phelps, who, during the period of Administration which led to Rangersâ?? Liquidation, lurched from one seemingly self induced crisis to another, changing their tune from one day to the next.

 

Duff and Phelps are already been probed by the Insolvency Practitioners Association as well as also being the subject of an investigation ordered by a clearly concerned High Court Judge, Lord Hodge.

 

Now they will have to face some serious questions from the all powerful BDO. The remit handed to BDO from HMRC is far reaching and allows their team of top investigators to do just about anything they want and ask any questions they wish, to anyone they choose to grill, in the quest to get to the truth.

 

And one of the men who will be grilled by BDO is Duff and Phelps senior partner, David Grier, a shadowy character who closeness to Lloyds Bank's man on the old Rangers board, the controversial Donald Muir, has never been properly explained.

 

The two are thought to be old Barrhead buddies and that backdrop to their subsequent involvement in the dodgy deal which saw conman Craig Whyte buy Rangers for a quid, on the understanding he would clear the clubâ??s outstanding debt of £18M â?? the reason why Lloyds put Muir inside the Blue Room - has got the BDO radar pinging.

 

BDO want to know just who knew conman Whyte could only raise the £18M against assets owned by Rangers, at a time when he did not own Rangers? Did Grier know? Did Muir know?

 

It is also interesting to ponder one thing which had previously slipped under the radar until BDO homed in on it. Of all the people to whom Rangers owed money, only one organisation was paid off in full. Lloyds Bank.

 

Once more â?? and this comes from someone who is at the heart of it all â?? BDO already have a fair idea of what it was which happened and whether it was reckless or criminal, or even reckless criminality, the likelihood is increasing that someone will end up in the dock.

 

Not in the Civil Court of Session either, but in the Criminal High Court.

 

Those who watched the horror unfold and whose warnings and red alert flashes went unheeded now harbour high hopes that the guilty men will be punished.

 

And another source has made something else clear to me which no newspaper has bothered to report since the news broke a couple of weeks ago that HMRC wanted to appeal the Tax Tribunal case against Rangers which they lost.

 

That is, that although HMRC may be desperate to spend even more taxpayersâ?? money chasing Rangers, there is no guarantee that they will be allowed to do so.

 

What HMRC must now do is lodge a formal request to a panel of Special Commissioners and those Commissioners must sift through the charges and the judgement and decide whether or not there is a point of law which can be challenged. It will be a long job. And only if the Special Commissioners believe there is such a point of law, which the two senior lawyers, one of them a QC and a tax law expert, may have got wrong, will HMRC be granted the right of appeal.

 

To achieve that, HMRC must be specific on what points of law they want to challenge and there is a rigorous process for the tax man to go through before he has a chance of being given leave to appeal. A catch-all, taking in all the points of law which the two top tax lawyers ruled in Rangers favour on, will be dismissed by the Special Commissioners.

 

And the section of the judgment document written by the QC who is among the top tax law experts in Britain and the other top tax lawyer, was damning of the HMRC case.

 

However, even if the Special Commissioners were satisfied enough to give HMRC leave to appeal, that appeal could take between two and three years.

 

By which time Craig Whyte may well be in the clink. And who knows who will be in the cells on either side of him when BDO have finished their hunt for the rogues and rascals who ruined Rangers.