flyingrodent

Seriously, I couldn't care less. Of all the outrageous behaviour involved in these shenanigans, "somebody leaking some information" is away down at the bottom of the list. Mind you, if it was part of an open hearing on the malfeasance and destruction of your club that hauled Murray into court to explain himself, I'd welcome it with open arms.

Go get 'em, tiger!

Aye, I remember all the chat last season - Show the RTC blogger the red card! Sink us & we'll sink Phil McMadeUpName Paul McConville's blog must NOT stay open, that's the bottom line! Let the bloggers know/ That we fear no foe/ And we don't do walking away Etc and so on

Could be. That would be ironic, wouldn't it? A man with Sir Dave's... chequered business history, getting somebody else banged up for receiving stolen goods. Time will tell, and I've got a lot of popcorn in the cupboards.

I guess we'll see how strong or weak it is and, like I say, I certainly wouldn't put it past your old club to find some underhanded method of sliming their way out of their current predicament. They've done little else, over the last few years. But I will say this - what you're doing here is shouting No it isnae! and No it wisnae! to every point put to you, regardless of whether these points are supported by facts that are a matter of public record or are just inferences drawn from what we currently know. That might make you feel better, but your club's lawyers might want to concoct a sturdier defence than yours.

Who is going to sue them? David Murray? Is David Murray really interested in accounting for his business affairs at Rangers in an open, public forum?

Yes, but Sir Dave would be only one case, wouldn't he? I believe you're on the hook for over thirty. Are you a gambling man? Care to work out the odds that all thirty cases relate to executives or kit-men? And of course, I do know nothing - nothing more than is in the public domain, anyway, so no more than you. You'll notice that our conclusions are very different, though. Are you confident that my interpretation is based solely upon a mad desire to destroy your football club?

I've seen bloggers all over the land do this, even when they were 100% certain they were correct. I've seen a minor politics blog take down information relating to a well-known Independent journalist before, even though their comments were a matter of public record. I'll name them, if you want to check this out - it would be very, very easy to verify. Even honest brokers take down actionable material as soon as they receive a complaint, because libel law in this country is so insanely slanted in favour of wealthy litigants that fighting libel suits often isn't worth it. That's why Americans often sue American magazines in London, rather than in the US, where they wouldn't have a chance. There's a wealth of source material on this aspect of libel law I can point you to, if you're interested in it. But like I say, it doesn't matter. I hope that David Murray does sue the RTC blogger and Phil McWhatever. Let them all rip each other to shreds in the public eye, and let justice be done! I would be loving it.

Why, it could be non-playing staff. The evidence we've seen so far suggests that players hugely outnumbered backroom staff for these payments, but if it is only non-playing staff, you'd be in the clear, I reckon. Of course, if they were playing staff, then you can start unpicking one of those stars off your jerseys. Even assuming that a million is the total liability - which is just as much an assumption as anything you're accusing me of - there's no way of knowing what percentage of actual remuneration that represents. By example - you and I pay roughly a third of our income to the taxman because unlike Rangers players, we aren't employed by a bunch of wealthy shysters. And again - it doesn't matter whether the sums paid out are massive* or miniscule. What matters is whether the payments were registered with the appropriate football authority. The commission is not adjudicating on the tax status of the payments, as far as I can see. It's deciding whether the payments were compliant with SPL rules. Even if we look at this issue through your own blue-tinted glasses, I'd say that it would be prudent for Rangers fans to invest in Pampers and brown trousers for the verdict. *And I'd call a payment of, say, £100,000 "a massive sum of money" for an individual to receive as a lump sum.

That's just wise conduct, if you think you might be about to be on the end of a big, hairy libel case - it reduces potential damage to the plaintiff and covers the defendant's backside a little, although nowhere near enough. It's perfectly possible that RTC and various others might decide not to fight a case, assuming Sir Dave fancies one, which I seriously doubt he does. They might decide to settle out of court, which wouldn't be entertaining at all, rather than risk a massive payout later on - libel law in the UK is ludicrous, Draconian and deliberately biased towards the very wealthy. On the other hand, if they did fight it, I'd wager they'd have volunteers willing to work for free from among some of the country's brightest and most publicity-hungry lawyers and accountants, and you'd better believe that any lawyer taking the case on would be choking to get SDM, Craigy White, Charles Green et al into the dock so they can be grilled in open court on the most intimate details of their business dealings. If you think David Murray cares enough about a few bloggers to risk having to publicly account for his actions... Well, you have more faith in his integrity than I do. But as your fellow Rangers fans have said, bring it on - let's hear everything in gory detail and let everyone who deserves justice face it. I cannot wait to watch the bloodbath.

I really, really fervently hope that Murray does go after these bloggers - he would force them to air their allegations in an open public forum, on a far, far wider set of issues than merely the tax case, and most of the major players would be eligible to be hauled into court and compelled to testify. Given Sir Dave's attitude to secrecy in his (ahem) "Business dealings", how likely do you think it is that he'd fancy taking to the dock to discuss the ins and outs of Old Rangers' finances? Would Craigy Whyte? Would Charlie Green or Alistair Johnson or Martin Bain? Would. They. Falkirk. (By the way, a far funnier result would be if the Rangers Fighting Fannies scraped together the cash to raise an action. Imagine the Big House guy conducting a cross-examination!). Whatever happens, I hope and pray that this hits an open court. I would love to watch the sh*te hit the fan in that trial - it'd be like a muck-spreader in court, and it wouldn't splatter a single innocent man.

Yes, the vast majority of the cases considered were decreed "loans"*. Note that your club conceded that around thirty or so were not "loans", and that they lost several other cases. This leaves us with thirty-odd cases of players being paid massive sums without informing the football authorities that these sums were being paid. The panel are sitting to decide whether Rangers paid massive sums to players without informing the football authorities that these sums were being paid. If the panel decides that Rangers did this, then you're guilty of cheating. Given that this is the case, what are you basing your judgement that the SPL are running a "Kangaroo court" on? This is before we get to the point that, even if their Lordships had found your club 100% innocent - which they categorically did not, since they found you guilty on several counts, and your club admitted to being guilty on many others - the SPL commission would still have to hear the evidence, then produce a report to confirm that Rangers are 100% innocent**. Now, David Murray knows that the SPL commission are required to reach a verdict. Craig Whyte knows the SPL commission are required to reach a verdict. The Sun, the Daily Record, Jim Traynor, the various Rangers supporters group - all of them know that the SPL commission are required to reach a verdict. That being the case, why are all of these businessmen, journalists and supporters pretending that they don't know this, by demanding that the inquiry be halted? I'll answer this for you - it's because there's a lot of shysters and chancers openly lying about this case, and the biggest offenders are all affiliated to your club. (Again, this isn't to deny that your club might wriggle out of this. They are experts at slithering away from any and all responsibility and may yet slime their way out of the reach of justice). *They were not "loans" in any other phraseology than the ludicrous bullshit patter of tax law, which is designed explicitly to enable wealthy conmen like your former owners. **Which they aren't.

Dignitas, more like.

Old Rangers didn't contest a number of the cases and has also been found liable for tax on a minority of others. Translated - Old Rangers were well and truly at it throughout, but HMRC were only able to prove this in a minority of cases, much to Hector's surprise. The story now moves to the football inquiry, where Old Rangers will have to go some to prove that these "discretionary loans" - or, in non-legal terms, "massive tax-free payments that did not ever need to be repaid" - were somehow entirely separate from players' remuneration. Given that we know side-letters confirming these "loans" as payments exist - they're referred to in the judgement, if you've been paying attention - it's going to be fun to see how your old club try to wriggle out of admitting their liability*. The Herald is better on this than the tabloids**, who are busy sucking up to you and your fellow fans like a nuclear-powered Dyson, because they want your money. Edit - Linky http://www.heraldsco...prieve.19486807 *Although I freely admit that it's perfectly possible your old club might still wriggle out of this one yet. They've managed to slither away from all their financial responsibilities; they've bullshitted their way out of the civil courts with a slap on the wrist and will no doubt turn all of their dark arts of deceit upon the commission. **Today's tabloids are an instructive lesson on just how many huge, honking lies you can stampede into print, if you're basically paying the salaries of the men who write them.

In other news, turkeys call for ban on Christmas... Rangers Supporters Club secretary calls for payments hearing to be scrapped John Macmillan, secretary of the Rangers Supporters Clubs, has called for a hearing into alleged undisclosed payments to players to be scrapped in the wake of the club's 'big tax case' success. http://www.telegraph...e-scrapped.html The case, of course, has found that Rangers were in fact making dodgy, taxable payments to plenty of players using the EBT system - it just found that the majority of these lump-sum, tax-free payments that never have to be paid back were, uh, "Loans". Cynics might suspect that Old Rangers admitted to/were found guilty on the cases where HMRC were able to get their hands on the relevant documentation, and were found to be compliant on those cases where letters and contracts "accidentally" fell into the shredder. You have to imagine that HMRC thought that, if they could prove that Rangers repeatedly paid players taxable "loans" using this financial mechanism, that the implication would be that the whole thing was taxable. Not according to two of their lordships, it seems. This roaster has the situation exactly arse-backwards. The call should be for a full and public inquiry by the SPL. Question number one - Okay Old Rangers, please explain why you set up a massive, exotic tax avoidance scheme and operated most of it "legally", while also choosing to make taxable payments to a small number of your players, for seemingly no reason at all. Up until now, the supporters' clubs seemed to be pretty vocal about wanting to know the truth. Well, I 100% agree! Let's hear the truth in an open public forum, with the press on hand to record every detail.

Oh aye, the majority of the panel found in Old Rangers' favour in the majority of cases, i.e. the ones where HMRC didn't provide enough evidence. The dissenting opinion basically makes you sound like a criminal enterprise, but that's only important for future cases. Take out the cases that you somehow got away with argued successfully, and what we're left with is all the instances where Old Rangers confessed that they were scamming admitted that they were liable for tax, and those where they were found to have been on the rob liable for tax. And so what we're left with is a massive, tailor-made tax evasion avoidance scheme that was mostly within the law, according to two out of three judges, but which was bizarrely used to reward only some players in a taxable fashion, for some reason that escapes us. A cynic might say that there was more going on here than meets the eye; that the whole thing was a scam and your lawyers have dug you out of the sh*te by successfully quibbling over the definition of the word "loan". Even a fair-minded assessment would say you've got away damn lucky with a mild slapping, rather than the skelpit leathering you could plainly have got. A died in the wool partisan who couldn't care less about anything other than crowing and cackling, though, would say "We're pure innocent and vindicated, we never cheated, so we didn't", and would ignore all the cases in which you confessed to cheating avoiding tax. A numpty would blame someone other than David Murray, Craig Whyte or your former directors for your club's untimely demise.

To quote myself... Nothing says "totally exonerated" quite like two-thirds of the judges allowing that, in principle, Rangers mostly didn't intentionally cheat the Treasury because, like, if you squint really hard at the word "loan", it could possibly mean "a massive cash gift that doesn't ever need to be repaid", except for the instances where they found that you were guilty, in which "loan" means "a massive cash gift that does need to be repaid, but never will be". Yup, just a bunch of wrongly-accused men deliberately offloading then killing the club they're accused of using for criminal purposes, and then refusing to hand over evidence unless forced to do so at legal gunpoint, just like all innocent people would. Yes, nothing suspect going on there. Even the minority opinion, which basically depicts your club a vehicle for an offensively obvious multi-million pound fraud, that's irrelevant. Totally innocent and vindicated, that's it. Nothing at all to see here. Blameless, yes.

Transpires that the pornographer also had a better grasp of tax law than David Murray, Craig Whyte or any of your old club's executives, board members or accountants. That's why they smothered Rangers with a pillow rather than face the consequences of the court case, see? Maybe you should be a wee bit more annoyed at the men who deliberately killed your club, and less irate with a bunch of strangers on a website?

If Old Rangers gave your Granny £1.7m tax-free and told her she didn't have to pay a penny of it back if she didn't want to, she'd have a "loan", apparently.

On a No-Win, No-Fee basis, I imagine...

Well, it's my thirty-fifth birthday on Monday. Can you give me an idea of the timeframe here, so I know when to look out for this astonishing feat? I'd predict - within five years, if you start cheating again; maybe within twenty, if you don't.

I might give it a bash, if you can name me another company that's responded to an investigation of its tax dodging by ripping off another for twenty five million quid, then deliberately putting itself in administration through non-payment of taxes, followed by liquidation. You know, just the kind of thing that innocent parties always do when they're wrongly accused. Seriously, you can't laugh long or hard enough at this stuff. David Murray was so confident of the legality of this half-arsed scheme that he flogged your club for a quid to the first passing conman rather than face the music. Craig Whyte was so confident of the legality of the scam that he deliberately forced the club into administration to avoid liability. Your directors were so confident of its legality that they've spent the last year shouting "It wisnae me!" and slashing each other to ribbons in the press. And now, we're getting all this crowing and cackling about how credulous everyone else is, for believing that so-called "loans" that feature "voluntary repayment" may have been dodgy and/or criminal? Good God, your own directors believed it with such certainty that they destroyed your club rather than take responsibility for it! What's happened here is that HMRC have failed to prove to two of the judges' satisfaction that the entire scheme was a massive, intentional tax-evading scam, and we're stuck with the farcical idea that Rangers constructed an grand, exotic financial instrument for paying their players, then suddenly - for no clear reason - decided to make taxable payments to only a few of your employees. Well aye, that makes a whole load of sense. Once again, your club has slithered away from taking responsibility for its own reckless, insane financial policies, just as it's slithered away from repaying companies, organisations and individuals throughout the land; just as its fans are still slithering away from the consequences of liquidation. Listening to the men who orchestrated this collossal disaster crowing about their awesome victory and baying for retribution - on HMRC, on the SPL, on the tax case blogger - is just hysterical. This whole thing has been hilarious from start to finish, and here's the best part - it's not finished yet.

Payback seems to have been voluntary! My, what an unusual form of loan this is, where repayment is wholly contingent upon whether the debtor can be arsed to return the cash. I keep expecting HMRC to drive through the wall in a little clown car. Sure, you'll know that justice has been done beyond all reasonable doubt when a very expensive legal team is able to convince two out of three judges that the word "Loan" definitely means "Thing which doesn't have to be repaid" but absolutely cannot possibly mean "Salary", "Wage" or "Remuneration". Well, except for the ones where they did get busted, that is.

Given that this case has dragged on for years, rather than months, and that Old Rangers spent a significant part of that time dragging its feet and saying "Eh, let me just go have a look for they documents, I'm sure they must be here somewhere" i.e. being deliberately obstructive, anyone related to the OldCo would have to have to be a shameless bullshitter with balls of pure brass to complain that HMRC were.... ...Oh no, wait a minute. As you were.

God, this is hilarious. I guess nothing says "totally exonerated" quite like two-thirds of the judges allowing that, in principle, Rangers mostly didn't intentionally cheat the Treasury because, like, if you squint really hard at the word "loan", it could possibly mean "a massive cash gift that doesn't ever need to be repaid", except for the instances in which "loan" means "a massive cash gift that does need to be repaid, but won't ever be". Slapstick stuff. Well, if you've ever wondered why you have to pay more than a third of your income to the government but Starbucks gets to trouser almost 100% of their bajillion-pound profits, wonder no longer. It's because paying tax is pretty much optional for them, but compulsory for you.