Ex-Rangers administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark in £21m settlement

[Bill 13,717]

28 minutes ago, compo said:

I hope they all win their corner and get outrageous compensation 

I know what you mean but I'd rather my reluctantly-paid taxes were put to better use.

[Gonzo79 13,580]

I wish all those involved in the goings on that resulted in our problems, from Murray and Whyte right down to these parasites, nothing but bad luck and trouble.  

 

It'll be a good day when it's all consigned to the history books.

[JohnMc 2,463]

2 hours ago, Uilleam said:

The current Lord Advocate, Woolfe, seems to have been, at least, attempting to clear the hospital ba', passed to him by his predecessor, Mulholland. While failing, and  falling short of the Goldson Standard...

Applause. 

[Uilleam 5,409]

1 hour ago, compo said:

I hope they all win their corner and get outrageous compensation 

Actually, it seems to be shootie-in, with your pal's wee sister in goal. 

 

I think we could thole the complete Crown Office clusterfuck, more easily, if there was a comprehensive and independent Public Enquiry to come. I am not optimistic.

It used to be -only- doctors who buried their mistakes. Nowadays, any lack of integrity and professionalism by government, or by professional practitioner, may be buried under a mountain of prevarication, and fudge, and lies. 

 

 

[Uilleam 5,409]

47 minutes ago, Gonzo79 said:

It'll be a good day when it's all consigned to the history books.

Indeed it will.

 

I strongly suspect that the whole Rangers' fiasco, when uncovered and made clear, will figure in textbooks, lectures, tutorials, and workshops, for the edification and instruction of aspiring lawyers, accountants, tax inspectors (and not forgetting the Comptrollers of Kerrydale Street), for some years to come. 

 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Uilleam

[Uilleam 5,409]

At what point can we say that there is a "clamour" for an Independent Public Enquiry?

 

 

Only and independent inquiry on malicious prosecutions of Rangers administrators can have credibility

by Liam Kerr

 

Article from Saturday 13, February, 2021

 

https://www.thinkscotland.org/todays-thinking/articles.html?read_full=14442

 

 

LAST WEEK, Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser called a debate, demanding a public inquiry into the “malicious prosecutions” of two administrators of Rangers FC.

In his opening remarks he used the word “incredible”. 

And the contents of the subsequent debate and contributions of members from across the chamber were truly incredible. 

The facts in summary are that David Whitehouse and Paul Clark were partners in the international insolvency firm Duff & Phelps and handled the administration of Rangers Football Club plc.

They were later arrested on suspicion of fraud and on a Friday morning in November 2014, were taken from their homes in Chester, England and driven to Glasgow, arriving too late in the day to be able to appear in court – timing that they believe was deliberate. 

They were held in police custody until the Monday morning, left in cells without a mattress to sleep on and with lights burning throughout the night, and were checked on hourly as they were deemed to be on suicide watch. They were, in their words, treated as if they were terrorists.

Until May 2016, the considerable weight of the Scottish criminal justice system was brought to bear on them.

Yet those individuals had committed no crime, and nor was there a proper evidential basis for them to be indicted. Their detention has been deemed a breach of article 5 of the European convention on human rights. Their prosecution, it has now been admitted by the Lord Advocate, was malicious. The experience that those innocent individuals suffered was horrific and, understandably, has had a major psychological impact on them both.

The Lord Advocate has admitted a “malicious prosecution”. 

It was not a simple human error, or an obscure legal mistake, or an error of evidence that suggested a need for individuals to be taken through a criminal process to establish their guilt or otherwise. In fact, our system of prosecution is admitting, unequivocally, that there was a malicious move to throw two innocent men behind bars and destroy their reputations. 

So what does “malicious” mean? The Lord Advocate gave a statement on Tuesday that such a prosecution can be “malicious” in law, but not have the requisite character of “malice” that the public might popularly think. Whether or not that is accepted, I am not convinced that a lack of “malice” means a lack of “criminal conduct” as the Lord Advocate seemed to suggest when he said that whilst there had been “significant departures from standard practice” he did not concede criminality by anyone in the Crown Office.

In brief, malice is a personal act, and an organisation cannot be malicious. To draw his conclusions from the investigation that he instructed, the Lord Advocate must have identified one or more individuals with the requisite mens rea for the offence, to conclude that the prosecution was malicious. That is, per the dictum of Lord Justice Bayley in the case of Bromage v Prosser, “a wrongful act, done intentionally, without just cause or excuse”, which according to Quinn v Leathem, is “proof of malice”. 

So the Lord Advocate must have identified an individual who, in their duties, acted wrongfully and “intentionally, without just cause or excuse”. Misconduct in public office is a crime. The conclusion that there was no criminal conduct surely requires deep exploration by an inquiry, in order to retain public confidence, one would have thought.

In any event, innocent individuals who were carrying out their job lawfully have faced prosecution not because of a suspicion that they had done anything wrong, but because of malicious intent by agents of the state. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been another instance of malicious prosecution in Scots law but, as Murdo Fraser put it, “we are still no closer to an explanation as to how and why those individuals became victims of a malicious prosecution; who authorised the action against them; or what the motivations behind that were”.

What we do know is that Messrs. Whitehouse and Clark were awarded £21 million in compensation and a further £3m in legal fees as a result of their malicious prosecution.

The Lord Advocate confirmed on Tuesday that those damages have been paid with a tax indemnity, meaning that, should Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs come against them for tax, the additional cost will be met by the Crown Office, potentially doubling the payout.

The Crown Office could be forced to pay overall damages of up to £100m when all the cases are finalised.

We do not yet know from which budget that money will be taken, but however the finance secretary chooses to do it, vital public spending of some description will lose out.

So it is imperative we understand why this happened, who was responsible and how such grievous acts went unchecked for so long.

But getting answers must be combined with ensuring that there is full public confidence in the prosecution system. On Tuesday the Lord Advocate told me in response to my Chamber questions that “in this case... the normal processes that are routinely followed in every High Court case were not followed, but the public should take reassurance… [that]… the prosecution system in Scotland is robust, fair and independent, and is one on which they can rely.”

But he did not articulate WHY we should have such confidence. 

Certain individuals must have made decisions that meant the prosecution proceeded. We need to know who they are and what those decisions were, and those people need to be held to account for them. The public need to be reassured that what we have just seen can never happen again.

The Lord Advocate told us there had been an investigation undertaken by a legal team instructed by him. Yet from the outside it looks like the Crown Office is marking its own homework. There will not be public confidence in any inquiry unless it is conducted externally and in public.

During the debate, the Lord Advocate argued that it is premature to conclude that any inquiry need not be before a Scottish judge. I do not agree. Given that this all happened on the former Lord Advocate’s watch and now responsibility has been admitted by the present Lord Advocate, it is imperative that there are no questions around legitimacy and independence.

The SNP Government argued that that an inquiry should await everything being completed in this matter. Again I argue that that view is not sustainable due to the the extraordinary circumstances and costs of the scandal.

The public must have answers as to why malicious prosecutions were pursued in defiance of evidence. To fail to set up a full, independent and public inquiry conducted by a member of the judiciary from outside Scotland, without delay, would, indeed, be “incredible”.

 

Liam Kerr is Shadow Justice Secretary and a Conservative & Unionist member of the Scottish Parliament for the North East.

[Bill 13,717]

The difference is stark. On the one hand there's Humza Yousaf, embodying every ounce of SNP ethos - tribal bigotry, shallow conceit and low grade ignorance. On the other there's Liam Kerr, a solicitor of repute and intellectual rigour (I ken fine because he was my solicitor). And the one who could no more have written that article than flown to Jupiter sits as Justice Secretary of Scotland. Such is the shithole we now live in.

[der Berliner 3,231]

You would hope that one day the cost for the tax payer will be made public, i.e. the cost it took HMRC to keep the EBT case up, chase it through the courts, go after administrators et al. The possible net gain for HMRC from BDO would be also interesting.

Edited February 17, 2021 by der Berliner

[Uilleam 5,409]

This could get interesting.

Lord Mulholland, the Lord Advocate when the Crown Office  implemented its mass arrests' programme, may be called to give evidence, and be cross examined in Court, by the silk acting for Mr David Grier, who is claiming significant (read eye-watering) damages for wrongful arrest, unlawful incarceration, denial of Human Rights, traducing of reputation;  the usual stuff, in  Ceausescu's  Scotland. 

 

I wonder if the Crown will fold and agree settlements, to save its washing being laundered in public, to allow Lord Mullholland to save face, and, to best serve the public interest by not undermining, even more, confidence in the competence of the country's system of justice. 

If I was a betting man.......

 

 

Judge in Rangers case to be witness

James Mulholland

Friday February 26 2021, 12.01am, The Times

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/judge-in-rangers-case-to-be-witness-spb0pdbjr

 

Compensation claims have arisen from arrests made during investigations into the sale of Rangers football club

 

The judge at the centre of a doomed Rangers fraud investigation is set to be called as a witness at a £5 million damages action brought by the club’s administrator.

Lord Mulholland is expected to be questioned at a Court of Session action about the time he was in charge of Scotland’s independent prosecution service.

Lawyers are set to ask him about the role he played in police and Crown investigations into alleged financial wrongdoing at the club.

 

David Grier, an administrator with Duff & Phelps, a financial consultancy, is suing the Crown Office and Police Scotland over the alleged unlawfulness of the investigation.

Grier was one of a number of men arrested during an investigation into the sale of the Ibrox club to Craig Whyte, a businessman. He and his co-accused were brought to court but acquitted after judge Lord Bannatyne concluded that there was no evidence to prove prosecutors’ claims.

 

Yesterday Andrew Smith, QC, the lawyer for Grier, told judge Lord Tyre that Lord Mulholland “is clearly going to be pivotal in this case”. He added: “Lord Mulholland will probably be on our list just in case my learned friend for some reason does not wish to lead him.”

 

Grier — who has been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing — is claiming that prosecutors had no evidence to justify him being arrested and charged. Grier is also suing the chief constable of Police Scotland for acting unlawfully when he was arrested during an investigation into wrongdoing at Rangers. He is seeking £2 million in damages from the force.

 

The legal actions stems from a police inquiry into the financial position of Rangers during the past decade and the sale of the club to Whyte.

This month Tyre ruled that the Crown had “no probable cause” to prosecute Grier. The judge said that Grier’s legal team still had to prove that the prosecution against their client was conducted maliciously.

He wrote: “Where, as here, the charges were dismissed as irrelevant, it seems to me that it will normally be difficult to argue that reasonable and probable cause existed from an objective standpoint.”

 

Yesterday Gerry Moynihan, QC, senior counsel for the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe, QC, said that Mulholland was being approached to provide a witness statement for the case.

 

The case is expected to be called on March 9. The parties will debate whether Tyre’s recent judgment about the prosecution lacking probable cause applies from the time Grier was arrested and appeared initially in court, or whether it applies only at the time the case was called in the High Court.

The full hearing in the case is expected in April.

[der Berliner 3,231]

Just to get this straight ... it is not about the Rangers case, but in essence "just" about the then-administrators and their claim for damages? Thus, in essence, a case "(former administrators) lawyers" vs "the Crown"?

 

IMHO, it would be far "cooler" if a similar case is brought up by *whoever is taking up the gauntlet for Rangers FC* against HMRC as a case for "undue pursuance" of a supposed sum of monetary return to the tax payer by spending excessive amounts of tax payers money in the knowledge that A) it was unlikely to get a or only a fraction in return and B) not pursue similar cases using our case as a sample*. If only to get to the driving forces behind the HMRC witch hunt.

 

*I have to admit that I don`t know whether HMRC has done that, but I guess it would be made public in some way by now.