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of logic mr dickson just sticks doggedly to his presumably coached lines of we didn t think we had to had he endlessly answered because we are the people for a whole day under oath it would have made as much sense it is quite a long read but worth the effort for anyone who wants to understand how the ailing mammoth that was rangers ended up dying in a tar pit of its own creation it seems incredible to me that anyone aware of the facts would deem mr dickson fit and proper for any current role in scottish football let alone allow him to sit on sfa and spfl committees mr dickson s submission starts at the foot of the second page of the file 11 mur180411 copy i have no copyright on this document i note the document contains no claim of copyright this document is provided here under reporting of current events provisions of fair dealing citing your source would be polite if you want to reference this content in any of your own reporting filed under general a history of unusual payments at ibrox 21 08 2017 this blog spent its first phase in 2011 and 2012 trying to draw attention to payments made to footballers by rangers fc all of those payments wee tax case and big tax case have now been established to have involved the deliberate non payment of taxes and lying to hmrc the scottish football authorities about the existence of side contracts detailing those payments however these were not the only irregular looking payments made by rangers through the murray group management remuneration trust mgmrt if you will indulge me and follow along closely you will see that a clear pattern of behaviour emerges this is yet another case where the devil is in the details so forgive me for a long and very detailed post but i hope it will be worth your time the following table shows the first five mgmrt sub trust recipients the number of their sub trust and the date the sub trust was first used i have chosen to obscure the name of the recipient of trust number 3 as he has no relevance to the rangers story the sharp eyed amongst you will notice something odd in the dates of first use for messrs souness and smith at the first tier tribunal ftt in 2010 2012 the process of creating sub trusts and allocating numbers was described in quite some depth as an example the following is an extract from murray group s ian macmillan s cross examination on 26th october 2010 this establishes the point that sub trust numbers were allocated in time sequenced order one after the other as needed indeed of the 111 sub trusts created for the mgmrt all of the other 109 sub trusts follow this format i e the order of sub trust numbers lines up with the order of creation and first use i e sub trust 5 was created before sub trust 6 and so on the only sub trusts that do not appear to follow this pattern were those created for souness and smith are you still with me hold on we are about to get to the point a pen and paper to track the timeline might be useful why does mr souness have sub trust number 2 when his loan request was made on 13th june 2001 which is after the first use of sub trust number 3 on 31st may 2001 mr souness has said this payment was for scouting work performed for rangers of course this was an odd response given that he was the manager of blackburn rovers at the time some cynics have suggested that the transfer of tugay kerimoğlu from rangers to mr souness blackburn rovers on 17th of may 2001 might be a related factor a decision to open a sub trust for mr souness on or around the 17th of may 2001 would explain why he would be allocated sub trust number 2 of course there may be other explanations whatever the truth behind this payment to souness i think we can all agree that it is highly unusual for one club to make payments to a long since ex employee who was working for another football club at the time walter smith s sub trust number 4 is even more perplexing funding of this trust took place in september 2002 based on a loan request letter submitted in early august 2002 this is unusual because we would expect naturally that sub trust number 4 would be opened after sub trust number 3 and before sub trust number 5 therefore we would expect that the decision to open mr smith s sub trust number 4 would have taken place between 31st may and the 5th of november 2001 this apparent delay in funding the sub trust for mr smith after having a number allocated is highly unusual in the context of the timeliness for the other rangers sub trusts those cynics might again wonder aloud if there was a connection between michael ball s transfer from everton to rangers on 2nd august 2001 or walter smith s termination as manager of everton on 13th march 2002 a decision to open sub trust number 4 for walter smith on or around 2nd august 2001 for ball s transfer would certainly fit the numbering of the sub trusts perfectly if this was the case we would have a second case of rangers making a payment to a long since former employee who was then the manager of a different club as background colour we might want to recall that in august 2001 michael ball was a rising star who had just received his first england cap that his career did not take off at ibrox was not something anyone would have anticipated in 2001 should we start to think once was a mistake twice is just careless was funding delayed to wait until smith was no longer the manager of another club of course there may be many other explanations for this sequence of events this blog post makes no accusations it merely posits questions against data that comes from the scottish courts and tribunals service for the record i am not aware of anyone asking mr smith about his ebt as mentioned above tribunal documentation indicates that a loan request was made in walter smith s name in august 2002 for 80 000 and the sub trust was funded with this amount by rangers on 24th september 2002 at the ftt smith s sub trust was reported just like any other with no mention made of him not being paid the submission excerpt above was originally interpreted by me as implying smith did not withdraw the money but i have received other information along the years that indicates that he did i do not know for certain that he did someone should ask him i will be pleased to provide any updates or corrections to this posting if mr smith would like to provide more information however it is not really important whether walter smith transferred this money or not it is far more important that the many questions surrounding why rangers were making payments to ex employees get answered could someone ask the sfa s andrew dickson who administered rangers payments to sub trusts to explain the many questions raised by the timeline of these events after all mr dickson received an email from ian macmillan on 16th july 2002 asking him to look into why smith had not had not been paid the agreed 80 000 by then see excerpt from ftt submission below this reads like the agreement to pay walter smith this was made much earlier than 16 july 2002 obviously mr smith will know what happened but it is especially important that a man still involved in the administration of scottish football for the sfa should explain what did he know about the smith payment and what did he do with that information mr dickson did you ask anyone at rangers or the murray group why the club was making payments to coach es of other club s if not why not you were certainly aware that such payments had been made when we add these events to the wee tax case the big tax case lying for years about the existence of side letters shredding of evidence of a contractual obligation bilking everton out of at least part of the transfer fee for the re sale of michael ball lying about the date of crystallisation of the wee tax case bill there is a pattern that emerges there are prima facie fraud cases awaiting at least some of these events it is blindingly obvious yet neither the scottish football association nor the scottish professional football league appear to have any appetite for investigating let alone addressing what was very clearly a major problem in the scottish game many of the people who have serious questions to answer about this pattern are still in positions of authority within the scottish game what else did the men who ruined rangers get up to there can be no sense that scottish football is fairly or competently administered while this pattern of unusual activity over many years goes uninvestigated filed under general the never ending story 30 11 2015 the news bdo will seek leave to appeal the big tax case or the so called big tax case as many like to call it means this saga may yet have some twists and turns to it like many i yearn for the end of this process but bdo do need to be seen to have exhausted all avenues to show an even handed approach to the interests of all creditors therefore news that they will seek leave to appeal is understandable however there are still many people who seem confused by what this was about myths have developed confusion reigns over whether rangers conduct of the relevant tax cases is currently considered legal or illegal was it was tax avoidance or tax evasion and so on most significantly the campaign to have the farcical nimmo smith commission findings set aside must be put on ice however the context of the tax cases and what effect they had on the demise of rangers can and should be discussed to really understand this tale and its impact on rangers fc we need to take another look at the side letter issue for it was the decision to use and then hide these documents that lit the match that lead to rangers self immolation between 1999 2003 faced with a resurgent and share issue funded celtic rangers started seeking an edge by lowering the taxes it had to pay on players wages this began with the operation of a discounted options scheme for players in essence this was a money box operation and rangers began what would become a pattern of lying forgetfulness delete as you think applicable towards hmrc and violating the rules of the scottish football authorities reducing wages in a player s official contract would result in reduced paye and nic taxes the rest of his promised wage would be paid with little or nothing deducted for tax through an elaborate ruse intended to disguise the fact that employment related pay was being channeled to players football had become a cut throat business and an out of form or injured player could not rely on a handshake to ensure that he got his full promised pay so rangers provided players using this scheme with secret side letters that promised additional payment denying the existence of the side letters was key to making the wee tax case scheme appear to work lying forgetting delete whichever one you think is implausible about the side letters was also key to the story of the big tax case it was this fundamental deceit omission delete as you see fit regarding the side letters that would seal rangers fate the big tax case dealt with rangers part of the murray group management remuneration trust mgmrt that used employee benefit trusts ebts from 2001 2011 a mr black an important and influential figure at rangers during the period when the ebt scheme operated was reported as saying at the first tier tax tribunal so far as rangers was concerned it enabled the club to attract players who would not otherwise have been obtainable his reasoning seems pretty straightforward to everyone except the scottish media and a cabal who appear to have been assembled by the spl in 2012 to try kill off the idea of removing rangers ill gotten titles establishing mr black s identity and role in all of this would have been both important and trivially easy for the spl s nimmo smith commission yet its findings overlooked mr black s submission some might believe this was regrettable like with the wee tax case the big tax case relied upon the use of secret side letters in a laughable attempt to create a non contractual promise in writing of money in exchange for services it would have required a revolution in legal thinking to have the side letters considered as being anything other than binding contracts therefore their existence had to remain a secret from both hmrc and the football authorities the side letters promised often specifying appearance pay and win bonuses money that would be paid into an offshore trust from their sub trusts players could borrow money but in reality never repay it with rangers already ringing alarm bells for their debt levels and staggering losses during much of the affected period the idea that more money would have been found to pay these players legally at the same level is just fatuous there is no serious argument to be made that rangers team would have been the same had they reduced the net paid to players by about 30 in some years on multiple occasions after 2004 hmrc asked rangers if such side contracts existed the denials from the club were forthright and frequent no such side letters existed accordingly these binding contractual documents were not sent to the spl despite player registration and eligibility to play in league games being conditional upon all documentation related to all forms of payment to players including even legitimate loans being submitted for each player spl rule d1 13 the existence of the side letters would not be exposed until the city of london police raided ibrox in july 2007 as part of an unrelated suspected fraud investigation that did not result in any charges heel dragging and evasive responses on how rangers were operating the scheme continued for all the fuss and ink spilled discussing these subjects in the media the debate has always missed the significance of this issue what would have happened if to understand the importance of hiding the side letters let us look at the counter factual case of what would have happened if directors of the rangers football club plc as it was then known had fulfilled their statutory duties to ensure that the club was compliant with its tax and regulatory obligations we can start by looking at the big tax case in isolation and consider that hmrc explicitly asked for an explanation of how the ebt scheme operated at the start of 2004 this was the first of several points where rangers representatives missed a golden chance to remove any doubt over the legality of the way they were operating the scheme instead they dissembled misled and withheld had they answered honestly and in full rangers would have been presented with a tax demand immediately certainly rangers would have appealed the bill and a tax tribunal would have been scheduled with fewer participants and much less documentation such a tribunal would have been conducted quickly even allowing for appeals had rangers not misled hmrc and the scottish football authorities the nature of rangers use of ebts and side letters would have been a matter of public record by late 2004 whether the sc...
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