Today the SFA made their inevitable decision and passed Dave King “fit and proper” to become chairman of Sevco Rangers.
The announcement has not come as a surprise, but it obliterates any claim the SFA has left of being a moral authority in the Scottish game.
Mark my words, today is a day of shame for the game here and something that in the fullness of time we are going to sorely regret.
Criminals now have free reign to take over clubs.
They have been given the green light.
The door is now wide open to all manner of abuses and violations of laws and regulatory charters.
There has never been a more abhorrent, scandalous decision in the history of our national sport.
I wrote a piece earlier today about how King clearly fails on several of the “fit and proper person” criteria.
The media campaign to distract from this has been long and has ultimately proved successful.
The SFA has ignored past precedents and what’s written down, in clear language, in their own guidelines.
Faith in our “governing body” has crashed to hitherto unplumbed depths.
Scottish football governance is now in the toilet.
This moment represents the point where the SFA “jumped the shark.”
For the record; David Cunningham King, the “glib and shameless liar” pled guilty to over forty separate income tax charges that on another day would have earned him two years apiece in prison, or a grand total of 80 some years in all.
Rangers Football Club, the ghost of which is now free to put him on the board, was liquidated after HMRC refused a CVA on the grounds that the club had deliberately withheld tax payable.
They were already investigating the club – and the board on which King sat – in relation to hundreds of other charges in what has now become known as the Big Tax Case.
The tax dodging for which they were eventually liquidated was the work of Craig Thomas Whyte, on whose board King also served.
In the past few years, others, such as Rafat Rizvi, wanted by Interpol on hundreds of fraud charges, have been linked to various boards and Sandy Easdale, who recently served as a director, has actually served a prison term for VAT fraud.
If you’re asking me is Dave King “fit and proper” to sit with those men, to continue in their name, then the answer would have to be yes.
Indeed, I can think of no-one more fit and proper than a convicted tax cheat to sit on the board of a phoenix company liquidated over unpaid tax.
It’s a marriage made in Heaven.
But that’s not the question, and it wasn’t the issue.
The issue is this;
Was Dave King a fit and proper person to sit on the board of a Scottish football club?
The answer to that is clearly, unequivocally, no but today the licensing body of Scottish football, in violation of its own charter, in contravention of its own rules, and sticking two big fingers up to every person in the game who plays by those rules, has disagreed.
It’s over with. I’ll never set foot in a Scottish football stadium again.
Because this will only continue as long as we allow it to.
Our own clubs don’t get out of this with a shred of credit either.
The SFA Board that rubberstamped this lamentable, disgraceful decision is made up of chairmen and officials at our clubs and there is no get out for those people when it comes time to account for this.
This decision reveals how completely the game here has descended into the gutter.
No amount of misplaced euphoria over a couple of commercial deals disguises the fact that it is led by spineless, yellow men who have no place trying to run a modern organisation.
They are cowardly, they are weak and they are corrupt.
As long as our game continues to be in the hands of such men we will not move forward.
We’ve all banged our heads against the wall over the SFA’s behaviour in the past.
It gets to the point where you realise that all you’re doing is damaging your head, and to a lesser degree the wall itself.
But it does not effect change. It does not alter a thing.
That’s what has to change first.
Our impotence in the face of these flagrant scandals.
Talking is not going to do it.
Our game is in the hands of certifiable morons and institutional idiots.
Over the next few days we’re going to hear excuses and attempts at explaining this decision, as though we were the stupid ones … and the one thing they will all have in common is that they will be predicated on us being just that.
This is a black, black day for our national sport.
Corruption and criminality have now been okayed by the governing body, in a complete capitulation which, again, seeks to benefit just one football team, at the expense of every other aspect of the game.
I personally do not care about King.
His “financial muscle” remains to be seen.
I think he talks more than he actually acts, and the troubles facing he and his shambolic football team will give him far more headaches than they will days in the sun.
My gripe is with the shameless, sycophantic weaklings at the SFA.
Today is a day of infamy for them.
Another in a long line of them.
(James Forrest has written a more detailed piece on this subject over on On Fields of Green. Read it at the link below.)
Thanks to everyone on the Rangers fan forums reading today.
Our excuse is that this is a major issue affecting Scottish football.
What’s yours? Are you obsessed?
PENN STATE FOOTBALL CLUB AKA GLASGOW CELTIC FC
The surprise to me,is that anybody is surprised,and the “honest mistakes will be in full tilt to get them back to where they belong(according to the peepil) starting tomorrow night,but for the Celtic its party time Sunday,and that hurts them,so if any of you sevconians are looking in,yes life’s a Bitch H H
C’mon the Hibs do to the Sevco zombies what the SFA are afraid to do . . .administer JUSTICE!
The lying King has no more excuses now.
Lets see the colour of his tainted money and see how far he gets –
without the cheating or EBTs to help him out.
Judging by some of the deprived comments on here tonight it would seem that the
zoo has some of its monkeys missing and are messing about with a computer.
And all these halfwit apologists pass on the mantra.. “It’s time to move on.” It is not. It is time to change. Great post James and I accept your reasoning for allowing the brains trust to post However when they persist in using the “M” word as a form of abuse I don’t think they should post.
Oh the sevco zombies are out tonight, all these comments, they seem excited, I think they think good things are coming their way now that a glib and shameless liar has been passed fit to run their club…..oh and the good times are coming but not for them.
Celtic are so far ahead in all aspects it will take at least a decade before they can even get close to us.
I wonder if they will still feel so upbeat after year after year watching Celtic win title after title going past 10 in a row and going past 54 league titles (all won without cheating),oh and watching us destroy them everytime we play them, winning by 5,6,7 and probably 8 goals.
It’s always a good time to be a Tim but the next 10 years will be amazing while over at zombie land we can watch and laugh at their plight and see how fast their fans start walking away once reality hits home.
Rangers “fans” absolutley disgust me with their use of child abuse to attack Celtic. No matter what is being said it is guaranteed that child abuse will be brought into it by a rangers “fan”. Child abuse is something EVERY human being deplores and is not something to be used for point scoring. How you relate child abuse to whether or not rangers are the same club never fails to puzzle me.
Thomas, your best just to ignore them, they only demonstrate why the rest of Scottish football despises them and wants them dead and buried forever, bigoted morons with an in-built delusional gene that really ought to be studied by psychologists. As for the article, a good read James but I wouldn’t give up on Celtic because of this. It may well turn out that PL did not support the decision and in any event my beef is with the SFA and we must turn our attention to how we force the brogues and blasers out and create an accountable and transparent organisation fit for the 21st century. HH
James in as much as not being surprised, I thought that part of the reasoning given when paul Murray was approved would have counted against king .Cant remember exact but was it not that because he didnt benefit from liquidation financially he was in wheras is it not that king is in line for a payout from bdo as a creditor.maybe someone with a better memory could enlighten me but as I said no surprise
It’s the repeated and institutionalised thievery of charity monies fro these clubs playing from that side of the city that disgusts me most.
I guess it
the way thing have always rolled over there , they even tryed to cheat the poor honest rangers supporting victims of that terrible disaster out of their rightfull compen money.
Says it all really, over there, that toilet block of a building comes before any charity or responsibility
Even to their own.
Supporting Celtic should always be the priority, by not turning up means that the bigoted and penny less cheats have won. I am not a PL fan by any means, he has only ever been interested in commercial success, not footballing success.
My own suggestion would be to stop attending away matches, (and if anyone is still stupid enough to go to the national team games) then I would certainly stop that.
You need to realise, if you haven’t done so already, the crooks at the SFA are not interested in Scottish football, they are only interested in the tribute act over in Zombie land.
Support your club as we continue to be the most successful team in Scotland.
And as for the 2 Zombies and their attempts at communication with a higher calibre of human being – please Google Kincora children’s home in Belfast. It will tell you all about how the orange lodge raped children and how it was covered up.
GIRFUY
Disgraceful yet utterly predictable decision by the apron-wearers at the SFA.
To all you scummy “Stills” making “Penn State” comments let me just say this; There has never been any proof that this actually happened at Celtic, but if it did I think you’ll find that every single Celtic fan would publically condemn it and seek appropriate punishments for those involved. However, I have NEVER seen one single Rangers (IL)/Sevco supporter condemn their dead club for shafting the tax payer, St. John’s Ambulance, that face painter, that newsagent, Strathclyde Police etc. etc. etc. and that is because you all truly are scum. I’ve never met a “Still” I would piss on if he was on fire. This isn’t an anti-protestant thing btw, it’s just Rangers (IL)/Sevco thing. The lowest of the low, and blind to the fact too.
Cant believe Celtic fans coming on here and saying they won’t re new season tickets won’t set foot in another Scottish stadium.Get a grip.
This isn’t Celtics fault and did you really think that the establishment wouldn’t pass the glib and shameless liar as fit and proper.REALY ? Let the bastard in ,I think he is shitting himself now,he will be shown up for what he is a dirty lying thieving scum bag,and the penny will drop when the knuckle draggers realise King is all talk and no substance or money.Big Mike’s got his card marked.
Bring it on King and co.
Real Celtic fans will renew their season tickets to support our club.
Remember we are Celtic supporters faithful through and through..
Hail Hail YNWA
Yan & yawnn The person that did those despicable things to children what club was he at before Celtic and what club swept it under the carpet so he could still go on & on molesting children and why a certain Mr Gough has never had a top job at rangers
The is a national disgrace
Respectfully, if you ever expected a different decision, you were fooling yourself. But your column smacks of fear. Why? All we need to do is stay ahead of them. The world knows King was and is corrupt. But they also knew his predessors were at least equally corrupt. The corrtion in the scottish game never went away just because they were liquidated. It only went on ice for a bit.
King was part of the corruption which took the old club down. He knows no other way and as a result will be part of the corruption which takes the new club down too. The thing which concerns me most is not the blessong of corruption man King. It is more the very strategic timing of the announcement, one day before a huge play-off game for lower division teams takes place.
We won’t face more corrupt dealings than in the past. Settle down!
I don’t know why the fuss I have no doubt that sevco will be gone from the history of Scottish football within 4 years they are the most gullible people on this planet and this new board is just the next taker’s and when any sign of a uprise from the zombies they will be fed a quick dose of vile about their well run neighbours because the fact is they hate us more than they love themselfs what a horrible life ,sad that all they live on is rumour’s and lies yet when you don’t know nothing else
King will be seen as ledless pencil he is.
Headline should read:
“CELTIC FANS IN OUTRAGE AT DECISION NOT GOING THEIR WAY. BOYCOTT UNSURPRISINGLY CALLED.”
Hilarious stuff as usual James. It is hilarious to see that you can’t appreciate there is another point of view apart from te skewed Celtic one. You keep going on about how all other teams hate Rangers. Yet the fans keep turning up to see them. Most football fans I know hate Celtic because of their constant whining (see referee strike, Inverness match, constant comments from an already indoctrinated manager… Go back for years). What is funny is that you think everyone is on your side when in reality they are laughing at your farcical behaviour.
Right ye are steve, we demand to know their names and addresses. PMSL!
Gowugh: SA: hotel room: rent boy: door lock: room mate: oops
To those who are condemning Peter lawell i think you will find that it was a sub committee that was convened for this set up(pardon the pun).there was never going to be any other result. Peter would have had no input imho.
Honestly I can’t get too worked up about all this, even if King hadn’t been given permission to become Rangers chairman, he would still have been effectively running the club. He was found guilty of tax avoidance in South Africa, not tax evasion as some have alleged. By the way, can anyone recall who was instrumental in turning the Irish Republic into an international tax haven, where individuals and companies could avoid paying tax owed in their own countries? Step forward Dermot Desmond. Doesn’t he have an association with a Scottish Football club?