HMRC & The Ticking Clock

[D'Artagnan 173]

â??We do not comment on speculation about breaches of confidentialityâ?

 

I'm sure many of us who have written to this organisation are familiar with this statement. In fact I'm willing to bet that thousands of Bears across the world have letters with the aforesaid phrase included. My advice â?? keep them, you may find a need for them in the future.

 

I asked HMRC a different question. Well actually I asked it of David Gauke MP at the Treasury who, interestingly, rather than answer the question, referred me to the Ministerial Unit at HMRC. The question I asked, as some of you will be remember was â??Did HMRC report report the leaks relative to the Rangers Tax Case to the Police ?â?

 

I receive a long winded response which failed to answer the question. In other words waffle. I have sent another letter asking for confirmation.

 

You see HMRC have a problem. A problem which increased in magnitude following the Nimmo Report, where the learned Lord Nimmo commented in [98] :-

 

Meanwhile, BBC Scotland came, by unknown means, into possession of what they described as â??dozens of secret emails, letters and documentsâ?, which we understand were the productions before the Tax Tribunal.

 

Now allow me to elaborate. The term â??productionsâ? is a legal description for evidence i.e. the murder weapon in a murder case would be a â??productionâ?. What Lord Nimmo is referring to is the various documents etc. which were seized during the HMRC investigation into Rangers and which were evidence or as Lord Nimmo refers to â?? productions - in the BTC. Now in any criminal or civil case for that matter where there are copious amounts of productions the investigative body will keep what is known as a Production Register. This carefully catalogue every single evidential item and assign it a Production Number for easy cross referencing at a later date.

 

Therefore when the Rangers Tax Case Blog was proudly revealing yet another â??exclusiveâ? which some in the journalistic community were moved to describe as â??sourced from within HMRCâ? it would have been a simple matter for someone at HMRC to review the document on the Rangers Tax Case Blog and then compare it to their own Production Register. If any of that documentation matched then that should have set alarms bell ringing (actually booming) within HMRC. So did they ?

 

If they haven't then they have failed to take all reasonable steps to protect confidentiality, furthermore they have failed to take all reasonable steps to protect evidence which they have seized, and I would respectfully suggest that given they are bound by the Official Secrets Act, they have failed, not only to investigate, but report a crime which is rightfully viewed as grave in this country.

 

But let me give HMRC the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Let us suppose they did cross reference the exclusives on the Rangers Tax Case Blog with their own Productions Register and found that they matched. What action did they take ?

 

Did they instigate an internal enquiry ?

 

In fact were they qualified or equipped to undertake such enquiry.

 

Given that such leaks constitute serious criminality did they report this to the Police ?

 

It is perhaps significant that following the result of the FTTT Sir David Murray, through his legal representatives, wrote to Crown Office, asking for a criminal enquiry to be launched into the leaks. This suggests that no such enquiry was currently underway and that HMRC had not reported the leaks to the Police.

 

Of course the Police have different powers and tools for investigation than HMRC. The Police have DNA/Fingerprinting, the power to search homes, seize computers demand ISP addresses as well as many other investigative tools and powers which are not available to HMRC.

 

The spotlight is now firmly focussed on whether HMRC took all reasonable steps to protect the confidentiality and security of the evidence it had seized. That spotlight will not be turned off until every Rangers fan has answers to the question posed in this article.

 

Tick Tock.

[barca72 440]

Stick with it, D'Art. Good stuff - well I mean your tenacity is good, but the actions of HMRC are a bit of a scunner.

[Juancornetto 1]

I've got the feeling there are some nervous individuals out there, Mark Daly is up to his neck in it.

[RANGERRAB 3,306]

I've got the feeling there are some nervous individuals out there, Mark Daly is up to his neck in it.

 

Hope you're correct. We need results soon whether it's HMRC, BBC Scotland, LBG or whoever.

[Zappa 0]

D'Art, you probably already know this, but I think there's a fairly high chance that the source of the leaks to both Mark Daly & co at the BBC and to the RTC blog was from within the HMRC "Solicitor's Office", which if correct would significantly narrow down the list of suspects.

[Zappa 0]

Something else that's maybe noteworthy is that HMRC actually started going after tax lawyers in the city last year for using EBT's and tax avoidance schemes similar to them. These are investigations they were conducting and undertook while their own Solicitor's Office appears to have had illegal security breaches regarding their case evidence/productions.

[D'Artagnan 173]

Wherever the suspect trail leads Zap I think there are quesitons to be answered at a corporate level regarding their conduct throughout this.

[RANGERRAB 3,306]

I'm still convinced that there was political intervention from a certain Labour politician who used his political influence to get HMRC to pursue us over these EBT's. The leaks were all part of it in the grand scheme of things.

It made the club unsellable at a time when SDM wished to sell (until Whyte appeared unfortunately).

Simultaneously the two bhoys at LBG were tightening the screw on the club regards its overdraft which AJ was successfully reducing.

Am I paranoid by saying everything was all part of a big set-up to destroy Rangers in which the predictable individuals in the mhedia played their part too and are continuing to do so today. We even had Keevins spouting nonsense on SSB on Monday night saying we were liquidated with over £100m debts - RUBBISH. The only debts the oldco eventually owed was Whye's nonpayment of PAYE/NI which HMRC allowed him to run up. The ticketus money to pay off LBG was a personal agreemnt between them & Whyte in which the monies never touched Rangers account hence ticketus having to chase Whyte for their money back

[Guest Thermopylae]

I'm still convinced that there was political intervention from a certain Labour politician who used his political influence to get HMRC to pursue us over these EBT's. The leaks were all part of it in the grand scheme of things.

It made the club unsellable at a time when SDM wished to sell (until Whyte appeared unfortunately).

Simultaneously the two bhoys at LBG were tightening the screw on the club regards its overdraft which AJ was successfully reducing.

Am I paranoid by saying everything was all part of a big set-up to destroy Rangers in which the predictable individuals in the mhedia played their part too and are continuing to do so today. We even had Keevins spouting nonsense on SSB on Monday night saying we were liquidated with over £100m debts - RUBBISH. The only debts the oldco eventually owed was Whye's nonpayment of PAYE/NI which HMRC allowed him to run up. The ticketus money to pay off LBG was a personal agreemnt between them & Whyte in which the monies never touched Rangers account hence ticketus having to chase Whyte for their money back

 

Tims will always abuse their position ... they are a menace in positions of power

[Bluedell 5,356]

Am I paranoid by saying everything was all part of a big set-up to destroy Rangers in which the predictable individuals in the mhedia played their part too and are continuing to do so today. We even had Keevins spouting nonsense on SSB on Monday night saying we were liquidated with over £100m debts - RUBBISH. The only debts the oldco eventually owed was Whye's nonpayment of PAYE/NI which HMRC allowed him to run up. The ticketus money to pay off LBG was a personal agreemnt between them & Whyte in which the monies never touched Rangers account hence ticketus having to chase Whyte for their money back

The Ticketus deal was between them and Rangers. Ticketus appear as a creditor in the list of creditors. Whether they then had the balance secured elsewhere doesn't change the fact that we owed the cash.