Big Rangers Administration/Liquidation Thread - All chat here!

[GreenockRover]

This. If King Dave hadn't ponied up the £45m to SARS, he was heading straight to jail. Perhaps Bendy might also like to reflect on the fact that at the time that King was up to his gonads in crime, South Africa was going through a period of huge transition - Mandela has just been released and the democratically elected ANC govt. were trying to unravel the political, tribal and economic legacy of the apartheid years. Sure, the tax laws at the time were lax and were being rewritten - King, I'm sure, took full advantage but the point is, the country that offered him his big opportunity in the first place was the country that he chose to shaft. SARS initially tried to get R2bn in unpaid taxes from him (How many schools would that have built ?) but after a 13 year battle settled for R700m.

You might believe in the Gordon Gekko mantra that "Greed is good" and tough shit one anyone who gets in the way. I don't.

If you live in a society and benefit from all that society has to offer, then it's only fair that you pay your share.

King basically put two fingers up to South Africa and stole money that should have gone to the betterment of the country.

Exactly the same as David Murray and Rangers FC (R.I.P.) did in this country.

See a common thread here Bendy ?

Go get your fuckin' shinebox.

*Insert pic of cheap whore sucking on a boaby here*

Embarrassing barely covers their wanton desire for sugar daddies to spunk (cash) on them.

The true costs of glory indeed.

[Apache Don]

He's a bad un so he is. He wholly justifies my forefathers' use of the wagon wheel and a slow burning fire.

[Florentine_Pogen]

Could you find a decent article on the alleged boiler room scams?

Haw, Bendy - how about you, or any other member of your Crufts Working Poodle Group, telling us why King Dave should get the keys to The Magic Kingdom vis a vis his past felonies versus the present and recent incumbents at The The Rangers.

In your own time.

P.S. Coloured crayons may be used.

Edited March 6, 2014 by Florentine_Pogen

[Florentine_Pogen]

Can you remember the approx date and I'll take a swatch?.

UNDICTATED: The dogged Mr Chipps who brought Dave King to book

Sep 2, 2013 | Alec Hogg

The self-absorbed narcissist has been transformed into a model of remorse and humility.

So was his decade-long belligerence all an act? Or might the "new" King be an invention for the media?

Mulling these questions triggered a reminder of conman turned Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) adviser Frank Abagnale, the subject of the 2002 movie, Catch Me If You Can. Using a crook to catch many other crooks, Abagnale’s insights helped the good guys wreak havoc on the US’s white-collar criminals.

King is unlikely to be joining SARS any time soon. But by having his affairs so publicly exposed, he’s already become an unwitting Abagnale. Never before has SARS dedicated so much time to the murky financial machinations of South Africa’s uber-rich. It should prove a great investment.

King did not invent offshore tax shields. Neither did he perfect them. His structures were complicated, but not overly so, centred on the British Virgin Islands-registered Ben Nevis. That, in turn, was owned by a Guernsey-based discretionary trust called Glencoe.

This was hardly rocket science, but it enabled him to "legitimately" keep the South African taxman in the dark for years — something he was certainly not alone in doing. Between 1990 and 2001, King disclosed taxable annual income averaging just R60,000. From that modest inflow he managed to live comfortably and acquire a game farm. No objections were raised. No audits called.

He may well have stayed under the radar. Except that 16 years ago, King hit the big time when landing a Treasury outsourcing contract from Umgeni Water Board. The chief supporter of the idea, Umgeni’s financial manager, Greg Morris, resigned to join King the day the contract was signed. That would be the cornerstone of a future legal battle. But, in 1997, such niceties mattered not.

A JSE new listings boom was in full swing. Anchored by the Umgeni contract, King created Specialised Outsourcing. Shares privately placing at 50c were pumped up by increasingly optimistic quarterly reports. The stock eventually hit a peak of R70.

Back then, JSE regulations did not require directors to disclose share dealings. So over the next three years, unbeknown to anyone except Outsourcing’s founder, Ben Nevis sold its 70% stake, reaping a profit of R1.2bn. The funds were immediately "repatriated" to offshore bank accounts.

Asset managers unable to find shares in the open market privately approached King for stock. He always denied being a seller. To his mind, that was true. Ben Nevis, not Mr DC King, was offloading.

Also to his way of thinking, the profit was tax-free. By the time South Africa’s capital gains tax was introduced in October 2001, Ben Nevis had sold out completely. By then, King had resigned from Outsourcing to start a similar business called Legacy Ventures. His original creation ended up worthless.

Sanlam, Old Mutual, Coronation and Southern Life tried to make King accountable, claiming that he fudged the financials and manipulated the share price. That, too, has faded from memory, and is no more than a historical footnote.

What eventually made things public was King’s refusal to declare the profit as taxable income. He argued it was not his to declare. Besides, even if it had been, he maintained, it was a tax-free capital gain.

With hindsight, had King kept a low profile, SARS may have remained unaware. His error was conspicuous consumption. Almost as quickly as the money came in, he spent it.

Properties in Sandhurst, Plettenberg Bay, Fancourt; wine farms in the Cape; half of Gary Player Stud; a R175m Falcon 900 jet, a £20m investment in Glasgow Rangers. The list stretches much longer.

Hope that works for you Bendy.......now, why is Dave King "The Man For All Seasons" ?

Edited March 6, 2014 by Florentine_Pogen

[bennett]

Haw, Bendy - how about you, or any other member of your Crufts Working Poodle Group, telling us why King Dave should get the keys to The Magic Kingdom vis a vis his past felonies versus the present and recent incumbents at The The Rangers.

In your own time.

P.S. Coloured crayons may be used.

Copying Densboys patter, poor wee Florie.....

[Florentine_Pogen]

Wait right there!.

Jawohl !

[Florentine_Pogen]

Link sends me to main page, that calls into question does it really exist?

It does exist. It's one of my posts. I've c & p'd it above for your perusal.

[Florentine_Pogen]

Thanks for that, its has saved me a bit of time searching.

I'll come back and read it after dinner.

You can read this too. It dates from 2008 but still valid......and interesting. :-

Alec Hogg wishes Dave King, pitching once more for media stardom, had read different books.

While ploughing through today's complex 12 500-word press statement, my mind drifted back to the last time I'd met with David Cunningham King. It was a few years ago at his mansion in Sandown. The one which he might or might not own, depending on who he is talking to at the time.

I was guided into one of the more spectacular libraries in the Southern Hemisphere. Books are among my passions, so one tends to remember the moment of exposure to hundreds of leather covers lining long walls. A feeling only slightly tinged by the disappointment that the books had been secured by some disinterested interior designer rather than a treasure hunter.

While waiting for the tea tray to arrive, we reverted, as one does, to small talk.

"Have you read many of these books?" I asked. "I only read the Classics," the lord of the manor responded. I don't recall much of the other couple hour interview. But those few words stuck with me all this time. Because they were so unlikely coming from the product of the harsh side of Glasgow, where poverty was rampant and shoes rare.

King is a master of knowing instinctively what to say to best suit his position at the time. His answer seems crafted to impress the impressionable reporter. In the cold light of day it's inconceivable to imagine King whiling away his leisure time ploughing through Homer's Iliad or Plato's Republic. But at the time, it seemed more than plausible.

Either way, it's a pity he never picked up Dale Carnegie's 1913 masterpiece How to win friends and influence people. Not just because King needs all the friends he can get. Rather, he might have absorbed some of the lessons in the book embraced by his buddy, golfing legend Gary Player. Especially the one about getting to know yourself. A journey which usually begins when one stops justifying indefensible actions.

King wouldn't even need to read the entire book. The first few pages of Chapter One would suffice. The part about "Two Gun" Crowley, the central character in the May 1931 shootout in New York's fashionable West End.

Carnegie writes that as Crowley crouched behind an overstuffed chair, dodging bullets from the cops and occasionally responding to their fire, "Two Gun" wrote a letter for the one who might come upon his body. The key part read "Under my coat is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm."

Two weeks before, the same charmer had assassinated a policeman so callously that after the mortally wounded man fell to the ground, "Two Gun" grabbed the officer's revolver and pumped more rounds into his victim's body. Crowley, incidentally, survived the fire-fight, but not the electric chair.

Carnegie writes that the claimed innocence of "Two Gun" is part of the human condition. No matter how heinous their crimes, perpetrators rationalise and justify to themselves how they are innocent of all accusations.

Like murdering gangster Al Capone, who genuinely saw himself as a benefactor rather than parasite on society, protesting that "I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man."

We have many local examples. Most recently lawnmower salesman turned robber of widows and orphans, Fidentia's J Arthur Brown who tells anyone prepared to listen that he is the one being victimised. That bungling by the authorities caused destitution among the thousands of widows and orphans whose bequests were tied up in Living Hands trust looted by Fidentia .

While at large, Brown helped convinced himself as much as the rest of world that his cause was honourable, by acquiring as employees the best sporting personalities the stolen money could buy. Creating a veneer of respectability such miscreants seem to crave.

So it is with King.

His ill-gotten millions have bought half of Gary Player's stud farm in the Karoo, partnership in Player's Blair Athol golf course development - and the honour of caddying for the famous golfer at the world's most prestigious tournament, The Masters at Augusta.

But tellingly, despite valiant attempts on his behalf King has never been able to crack membership of Johannesburg's private Riverclub golf course where South Africa's leading businessmen like Jacko Maree and Cyril Ramaphosa enjoy swinging their clubs.

The inner circle of South African business hasn't bought King's victimisation story. Nor, despite his three hour soliloquy at today's Press Conference, are they likely to.

Those in the know realise once you cut through the technicalities, he is the original "pump and dump" king. His great fortune amassed in record time through offloading shares in his listed company called Specialised Outsourcing; a company conceived in dubious circumstances and destined, almost as quickly, for the knacker's yard.

King's company became the first JSE-listed financial services operation to report quarterly results. Each one outdoing the next with glowing reviews and aggressive profit forecasts. Boosting the rapidly rising share price from the pre-listing 120c to more than 60 times that level.

Protected by then lax rules on disclosure of share sales by directors, King banked around R1,2bn by transferring ownership of a massively overpriced and since defunct company to asset managers. The buyers - trusting institutional fund managers - were never told the shares King was "sourcing" for them came from his own pockets. Had they known this, the buying frenzy in Specialised Outsourcing stock would have fizzled out as quickly as King and his cronies had started it.

The Specialised Outsourcing episode is the subject of a criminal action. King will be forced to answer for his actions in due course. A jail sentence is a distinct possibility. But from his own perspective, King will maintain his innocence. He never lied to those custodians of the nation's savings, as, technically, the soon-to-be-worthless shares were not owned by DC King Esq but by his investment trust (Ben Nevis).

It is now a matter of public record that the man who levelled one of the most expensive properties in Plettenberg Bay because he wanted to rebuild something more spectacular on the site, has not paid any tax since 1990. And it's equally well known how he sent Columbo-like Sars investigator Mr Chipps packing with a flea in his ear. Confident that his complex veil of offshore entities would never be pierced by Pretoria's Keystone Kops.

Today's widely publicised press conference, however, smacks of desperation. Eight years on, and at the cost of tens of millions in fees through appearances in South African, British and French courts, the net is closing around King. Despite the seemingly endless legal obstacles tossed into the pot by his large, well-fed legal team, the truth is now catching up with the country's most infamous tax dodger.

King now accuses Sars of underhanded tactics; of bullying his sanctimonious butt; and warning the rest of us that where he goes we may also follow. Like we'd have expected from "Two Gun" Crowley, Al Capone or J Arthur Brown. What a pity he never read different books. -

Write to: alec@moneyweb.co.za

Edited March 6, 2014 by Florentine_Pogen

[TheVoice]

The Sunday Post are saying that Rangers need a Fergus McCann!!!!!

Would Rangers be in Celtic's position if they had had him 15 years ago?

Link here if you're interested: http://www.sundaypost.com/sport/football/rangers-need-their-very-own-fergus-mccann-to-get-out-of-this-crisis-1.247715

[Ken Fitlike]

The Sunday Post are saying that Rangers need a Fergus McCann!!!!!

Would Rangers be in Celtic's position if they had had him 15 years ago?

Link here if you're interested: http://www.sundaypost.com/sport/football/rangers-need-their-very-own-fergus-mccann-to-get-out-of-this-crisis-1.247715

Jings!

[Florentine_Pogen]

Dave King's Bermuda Triangle

30 May 2008 00:00

Nic Dawes, Lynley Donnelly

How do you hide a R1-billion fortune from the taxman? With bespoke help from offshore bankers desperate to get their hands on your portfolio, suggest documents emerging from the long-running battle between the South African Revenue Service (Sars) and its number-one target, Dave King.

A series of memos, emails and file notes from the Bank of Bermuda, which is now a subsidiary of global banking giant HSBC, show how the bank, eager to secure King as a client, helped him restructure his network of trusts and offshore companies to “present a blind alley to any revenue investigation”.

The documents are evidence in a Pretoria High Court trial, which will effectively determine whether Sars can seize assets held by King’s offshore structures.

King made about R1,2-billion from the sale of shares in Specialised Outsourcing, the company he founded to handle treasury operations for parastatals and government bodies. The company’s share price crashed not long afterward, as news of the sales trickled out. It was pushed down further as concerns about the company’s accounting practices grew and King moved on to a new venture, Financial Insourcing Specialists.

Angry institutional shareholders racked up massive losses while revenue authorities tried to reconcile King’s apparent enjoyment of a wine farm, a Ferrari and a private jet with his modest reported income.

In late 2000 he was contacted by Sars, wondering where the government’s slice of the proceeds from the share sales were. He has since stood on the defence that the profits were a capital gain, not revenue, an incurred no-tax liability, but at the time he quickly set about making sure that the money, much of which was held through a company called Ben Nevis, stayed firmly out of reach of the fiscus.

On November 15 2000, Steve Bougourd, senior trust officer at the Bank of Bermuda, wrote to his colleague, Dave Hewitson, saying: “Apparently DK wishes to ‘dismantle’ current structure and transfer the assets of Ben Nevis into a new company, as the ‘tax authorities are chasing him’.”

This is important for two reasons. First, it helps bolster the case that King was the true owner of Ben Nevis. Second, it suggests he restructured his holdings solely to escape tax scrutiny, which is a crucial plank in the case against him. King’s role in managing his assets was also to be kept quiet, Bougourd made clear: “DK’s position as an adviser should be very much an ‘off the record relationship’.”

Less than a week later a summary of a meeting with King, circulated within the Bank of Bermuda, restates the case: “DK has no tax adviser but is happy there is no problem from his point of view in closing the Ben Nevis company. His intention is just to present a blind alley to any revenue investigation.”

By March 9 2001 there was a clear plan, Bougourd wrote in an email to the bank’s Adrian Fairbourn: “[W]e are restructuring Ben Nevis to stop the South African taxman in his tracks. To kill two birds with one stone we are also liquidating all investments, as he wishes to take stock, consolidate his position and think through his strategy going forward.”

Even at this stage, before the bank secured more of King’s business, the sums involved were substantial.

“What we are doing is selling all his investments in the name of Ben Nevis, that is, a £10-million portfolio with Barclays Private Bank, and two Royal Skandia portfolios (managed by [Cape Town hedge fund firm] Alpha) amounting to approx £3-million.

“There is already some £50-million on depo with Barclays Private Bank (he has a long-standing relationship with Sir Anthony Richardson),” Bougourd wrote.

As the assets were sold they were “transferred up” to King’s Glencoe Trust and then into a new holding company, Metlika, “thus making a clean break with Ben Nevis”.

“Other assets, namely a property and shares in Murray sports, are being reregistered in the name Metlika, Glencoe Trust is also selling its portfolios with Old Mutual and Capel Cure Sharp, which amounted to £2,5-million”, the email continues.

The net effect of this move was temporarily to obscure from Sars the more than R500-million in cash and other assets that had been inadequately concealed by Ben Nevis.

HSBC may have a difficult time proving that the Bank of Bermuda (which it bought three years later in 2004) wasn’t a wholehearted participant in a dubious arrangement.

“The timing of the visit creates a great opportunity. He is heavily encashed, he is taking time out to think his strategy through and hopefully the markets will have stabilised a little by then and therefore offer a calmer selling environment. The key, I think, is that we need to be creative ... this could be significant business for the bank,” Bougourd wrote.

Sars’s efforts to recover R2,5-billion in taxes and penalties from King have been mired in a series of preliminary court battles over the seizure of assets and other technicalities—trial on the main tax charges is yet to begin.

The state is pressing a raft of criminal charges, including money laundering and racketeering, against him.

HSBC denied any knowledge of the type of services being provided to King through its subsidiary, Bank of Bermuda. Asked to comment on the evidence that its subsidiary had potentially been implicated in tax evasion and money laundering, HSBC said: “The incident would appear to relate to the period before HSBC acquired Bank of Bermuda. We do not believe, on the evidence presented, that HSBC is implicated.”

King claimed he had no idea which court case the documents related to, saying Sars constantly changed its version. The “bully tactic” of “seizing everything” and forcing “you to negotiate with them” has only made him more determined to fight the case, he said.

“We have fought for six years over the seizure of assets and still not gone to court,” he said. “After six years they have not won anything because their [case’s] merits are not good enough.” Despite the help of the South African Reserve Bank and the Financial Services Board “they still can’t beat me”, he said.

“I believe in the legitimacy of the trusts and I will do everything within my power to protect the legitimacy of my interests until I lose the tax case.”

Additional assets to seize

Last Wednesday, Sars won the first round in its latest bout with King.

The Pretoria High Court rejected with costs King’s application for the postponement of a trial to determine whether tax authorities can lay hands on assets held by Metlika, an offshore company allegedly used to hide hundreds of millions of rands in profit from the sale of King’s shares in Specialised Outsourcing.

Sars wants the court to reverse a series of transactions in which cash, shares, and property were shuffled from Ben Nevis, one of King’s main offshore vehicles, to Metlika.

Sars is leading evidence that suggests that this move was intended purely as a tax dodge.

Ben Nevis owes about R1,4-billion in taxes and penalties and if the transactions are reversed it will mean assets worth at least R500-million flow back into the company, where they can be seized by Sars and sold.

The trial, which is set down for six weeks, should help bring an end to six years of complex legal skirmishing over the recovery of money from King and set up the conditions for his trial on criminal charges arising from the affair.

Nic Dawes was a former editor-in-chief of the Mail & Guardian

[killingfloorman]

Jings!

Crivins

[Florentine_Pogen]

The Sunday Post are saying that Rangers need a Fergus McCann!!!!!

Would Rangers be in Celtic's position if they had had him 15 years ago?

Link here if you're interested: http://www.sundaypost.com/sport/football/rangers-need-their-very-own-fergus-mccann-to-get-out-of-this-crisis-1.247715

Jings ! Crivvens ! Help ma boab ! Ah wouldnae wipe ma' erse wi' The Sunday Post......................

[Florentine_Pogen]

Billionaire Dave King spent R68-million on lawyers

03 Aug 2006 08:19

Staff Reporter

Billionaire Dave King had already spent over R68,8-million on lawyers and there was more where that came from, the Pretoria High Court heard on Wednesday.

Prosecutor John Myburgh described King’s allegations that the National Director of Public Prosecutions and Reserve Bank had deliberately left him without any funds after freezing all his local and overseas assets as “outrageous”.

“It is outrageous to submit that we are infringing any of his rights. No facts were placed before the court to prove this,” he said.

King faces 322 charges of tax fraud, racketeering and foreign exchange contraventions laid out in an indictment of 200 000 pages.

King has said he would have to represent himself as he had no money to pay his defence.

“He is one of the wealthiest men not only in South Africa, but also in the United Kingdom, who spends between R1-million and R2,4-million per month and spends in excess of R300 000 on his credit card. He has spent over R65-million on lawyers,” said Myburgh.

“This man, who has not submitted a tax return in five years and practically paid no income tax for that period ... would rather spend R65-million on lawyers to fight Sars (the South African Revenue Service), than to treat this country with the respect it deserves,” he said.

The state was ready to proceed with the trial, and subpoenas had already been served on 42 witnesses. The state would also hand in affidavits contained in 14 lever-arch files.

“He said he doesn’t think the case is going on. We’re telling him this is a serious matter. The state wants to go on,” Myburgh said.

He said the state would be prejudiced if King’s trial was postponed indefinitely, as he had suggested, as it would not only waste costs, but could lead to a weakening of the state’s case.

Five state witnesses were elderly and two of them suffered from serious ailments, with one of them receiving chemotherapy. There was a possibility that they could die before testifying.

Further delays could give the impression the state was unable to prosecute big and complex commercial matters. It should be shown that an accused, especially a wealthy one, would not be allowed to systematically delay a trial.

Myburgh said it appeared that King would rather face arrest than comply with a British court order that he disclose his assets. The state believed he did not make that disclosure because he had sources of income elsewhere in the world.

Investigations revealed that in 1998 and 1999, King had transferred R1-billion from the sale of shares from South Africa.

He has never denied that there was money in his bank account in London, enforcing the impression that he had funds available.

Myburgh said a second fraud investigation was under way against King, but if it led to further charges, these would be tried separately.

King earlier alleged Sars had stopped him from concluding a plea bargain with the prosecution, but Myburgh said the prosecuting authority had consulted with Sars and then decided not to accept the plea bargain.

He said plea bargains had been debated over the past four years, with the latest offer expiring on Sunday, without King accepting it. He and his legal team now had to accept that he was facing a criminal trial on the merits of the case.

Myburgh will continue legal argument on Thursday. - Sapa

OK, that's enough on Dave King...........

Edited March 6, 2014 by Florentine_Pogen

[Ken Fitlike]

if the time-frames were adjusted 30 years, Robert Maxwell would have been a player in the Rangers / Sevco clusterf**k

[AberdeenBud]

if the time-frames were adjusted 30 years, Robert Maxwell would have been a player in the Rangers / Sevco clusterf**k

Aye, think we have have grabbed a few goals in the seaside leagues, tbf.

[Gaz FFC]

King being more crooked than Whyte or Green put together, it's just marvellous

[scottxs]

Florentine get ready for the usual " didn't read too long" from the usual muppets. Mainly tedi bendy Brenda and my favourite crayon munching buffoon snafu

[Milo]

Jings ! Crivvens ! Help ma boab ! Ah wouldnae wipe ma' erse wi' The Sunday Post......................

Don't look at me....you've got another think coming if you think I'm going to wipe your arse with the Sunday Post!

[Florentine_Pogen]

Florentine get ready for the usual " didn't read too long" from the usual muppets. Mainly tedi bendy Brenda and my favourite crayon munching buffoon snafu

Snafu = Bendy.

Benny = Slower than a week in the jail.

Whether they read or not, them's the facts. Dodgy Dave Mk.2 is very, very dodgy indeed.