This evening, as most of the Celtic Family knows, CQN published an update, setting out the results of the first phase of the Resolution 12 campaign.
In that report we got what we were looking for, a definitive answer to the central question the Requisitioners posed about the legitimacy of the SFA’s decision to award a European license to Rangers in 2011/12 when the club had a “tax liability payable”, in contravention of UEFA’s licensing regulations.
On that subject, we have a verdict from the only people who count; UEFA themselves, the continental governing body.
Forget everything you’ve heard about this case in the media.
Ignore the spin from the SFA. UEFA’s verdict was always the only one that mattered, and it is damning.
This is a verdict that requires no enhancement or exaggeration. It does not need to be coached in flowery language or hyperbole. It is straightforward, brutal, and absolute. It is the Last Word. There is no court of appeal and no hope of a reversal.
CQN’s article spells out what UEFA has said.
On the issue of the European license awarded to Rangers in 2011/12 UEFA have stated in their correspondence to the Requisitioners and their appointed legal representatives, that the granting of the license was a decision taken initially by the SFA and that it was that organisation’s responsibility to ensure that it had all the relevant facts which ensured that the club, Rangers, met the qualifying criteria as it is laid down.
Initially the SFA claimed that it did so. They filed the paperwork to that effect during the first licensing “window”, in which the club was obligated to declare any overdue tax matters. Stewart Regan will tell you that was the end of the SFA’s responsibility.
Indeed, he did just that only two months ago, with an announcement many believed was significant because he seemed to be suggesting that beyond that point any failings were the fault of the club itself as they had the responsibility for keeping UEFA up to date with its affairs.
I said at the time I thought Regan had thrown Rangers under the bus, and UEFA’s response to the Requisitioners makes it abundantly clear that this is exactly what he did.
UEFA’s letter says that at an “undetermined time” during that season either the SFA or UEFA became aware that Rangers had not fulfilled their own responsibilities to declare these matters to them. We would be speculating as to when that realisation occurred; it may well have been around the time sheriff officers were photographed at Ibrox serving the club with official paperwork and threatening legal action in relation to that tax bill.
UEFA’s letter clearly states that they accept that Rangers broke the rules as regards the licensing policy.
They had an unpaid tax bill which was in dispute.
Crucially, UEFA does not offer a conclusion – or seem to care – when this tax bill “crystallised”, which is one of the issues the Requisitioners spent a great deal of time on. This is also the area where criticis of the Offshore Game report found their key line of defence.
In UEFA’s eyes the “crystalisation” aspect is of little importance next to the central fact, that the rules were breached by Rangers’ non disclosure.
You see, UEFA’s licensing regulations are constructed around specific “windows” during which the club must inform the governing bodies of any circumstances which would negate their right to a license, and if the club is found to have concealed such things during any of those windows UEFA regards that as being the same as if the club had been in violation from the start.
The tax situation at Rangers became known to UEFA “at some point” during the licensing period for the season 2011/12.
In overall terms it does not really matter at which point it became known.
They would have acted anyway.
To put it another way, had they know Rangers had this liability before they played a European tie they would never have been allowed to.
Had Rangers gone through in Europe that year and not confounded my Netbet Bonus Code, instead of crashing out in ignominy and shame, twice in a month, and then the existence of this bill become known, they would have been removed from whichever competition they were in at the time and a disciplinary case opened with further punishments to fall on the club in the following season.
The ultimate finding of ineligibility is all that is important here.
The timing matters only inasmuch as that Celtic would have qualified for the Champions League had the facts been known sooner, and Motherwell given a UEFA Cup spot.
What matters is that UEFA accepts that the liability existed all along and that the license should either not have been awarded in the first place or revoked upon discovery. This is the central finding, and getting that was one of the key objectives of the Resolution 12 campaign. That part of their case has been proven.
The verdict from UEFA is guilty.
From there, UEFA moves on to the consequences of Rangers’ actions.
Ultimately there were to be none, and there will be none.
The record shows that the club broke the rules, and that some form of sanction was warranted. UEFA is clear on that.
Their reply also makes it plain that such a sanction would certainly have been imposed once an investigation had established the facts.
But UEFA were unable to open that investigation, and the reason is simple and straightforward enough that it, too, requires no hyperbole, overstatement or exaggeration.
It can be put as easily and plainly as it’s already been put over and over again in spoken word and on the blogs and on the forums and in tweets and emails and Facebook posts and text messages.
In February 2012 Craig Whyte put Rangers into administration.
The second he did that the club lost its European football eligibility for the 2012/13 season. No sanction could have been applied for that campaign. In the months that followed the club self-detonated and that removed any further need for UEFA to consider what actions were appropriate in respect of the 2011/12 license.
At that stage, no punishment was possible because Rangers no longer existed.
They had been consigned to oblivion and were beyond the reach of justice. As trials are not held for dead men, even if their crimes are discovered after the burial, neither can you impose sanctions on a legal entity or institution that is no longer there.
UEFA’s communique spells that out clearly.
It refers to the forming of “a new club/company which sought entry into the fourth tier of Scottish Football”.
It states that this new club/company “would not, and could not, in any event, qualify to play in European competition for the next three years.”
Take note of the precise way in which UEFA’s communique words this.
The reference to the “club/company” is deliberate.
This drives a wrecking ball through the assertions made by Neil Doncaster and Stewart Regan that these are two separate entities. UEFA has never considered them as such as its own regulations state, and in choosing to put the word “new” before both they’ve clearly accentuated their wider point.
UEFA is putting it as plainly as it can; the club playing at Ibrox is five years old.
It has no past or frame of reference before that point.
Not only was it ineligible for European football but it could not be held accountable for the past sins of Rangers.
Sevco can claim to be the spiritual successor to Rangers, as clubs around the world have done in concordance with their founding principles – like Gretna FC in Scotland – but it has no claim on the history of the club that came before it.
For Rangers Football Club that history ended with the refusal of the CVA and the subsequent sale of its assets to Charles Green and his consortium in 2012.
Every national newspaper reported that at the time.
It was an accepted, acknowledged, undisputed fact.
Nothing changed in the interim to alter that reality one iota, except that certain people, for their own reasons, decided they would ignore it.
The SFA’s “stance” on this matter and their insistence on pushing the Survival Myth is revealed for what we always said it was; farcical with no basis in reality whatsoever. UEFA has confirmed that in a manner that leaves no avenue for doubt.
In the week when the Chilcot Report was published into the reasons why this country went to war in Iraq I find it especially fitting that we now are able to cement our own reality, which was never in doubt any more than was our view on the Iraqi disaster.
All Chilcot did was put a rubber stamp – an official stamp – on that which most people already accepted and knew, but it was a momentous event nonetheless.
Our own understanding of the truth here is equally lucid and coherent, but this official endorsement of that means that reality can no longer be distorted by others.
They will try anyway, as Blair stood in front of the cameras and refused to apologise and continued to insist that he did nothing wrong.
Yet the verdict of almost every single observer in the political and media class is that he is living in denial. He cannot alter a single fact or offer one in mitigation. The overwhelming consensus is that the war is his toxic legacy, the one thing for which he will be remembered and that it has destroyed his reputation completely.
You see, it is not enough to ignore the world as it is.
The world goes on in spite of your delusion.
Likewise, the SFA can continue to deny the objective facts here as long as they like, but at some point in the future the club calling itself Rangers will qualify to compete in Europe and the fabric of their false prospectus will be torn down and the facts will be incontestable.
The club will be assigned a brand new co-efficient consonant with its lifespan and experience of continental football, the record will reflect their current haul of lower league trophies and whatever other success they manage to achieve, and that will be all.
Whatever pitiful resistance is offered here, the Survival Myth is over with.
To carry on with it now makes it the Survival Lie, because it has been exposed as such and stamped as such by European football’s governing agency.
Sevco fans have long been worried about the stripping of titles; that was wholly un-necessary as they had none to strip. For those who clung to the Survival Myth like a comfort blanket though, today is a day they ought never to forget because this was not the day they lost their titles … today UEFA stripped their history.
When fantasy and reality are co-joined in your mind, you accept the risks that attend it.
Those who believe in fairy-tales ought always to be afraid of dragons.
They held to this make-believe, they treated it as real, and so the ripping of the veil will hurt as if it was.
The illusion they desperately held on to will now eat them alive, as we warned them that it would.
For it was inevitable that a day like this would come.
Everybody in Scottish football ought to welcome it now that it has.
Our national sport’s brief flirtation with irrationality is finished and that ought to be a relief to those who’ve spent the last four years trying to square the impossible circle, to retrieve the logic behind Trigger’s Broom, to make sense of Schrödinger’s Football Club.
Common sense, clear thinking and rationality can again rise from this plague pit of lies.
Sevco can now be judged on its own merits and not against the artificial standards of a football club that itself was little more than an illusion, a shadow on the wall, built by unsustainable debts and kept alive beyond its time by the indulgence of banks and men too timid, too scared, to pull the plug on the whole damned thing.
That should be a relief to those running the club today, because the task they set themselves was impossible, the hill too steep to climb.
It should come as a relief to our governing bodies, who ought to accept it without contradiction or retreat. Theirs too has been a torturous road, and at the centre of it all was a wholly abhorrent concept that some clubs were “too big to fail.” Well, one of the biggest did and it would do the SFA great credit and be to our games enormous benefit if they acknowledged that fact, and let it serve as a warning to others who might otherwise suffer the same fate.
Lastly it should be accepted and acknowledged by our media. The restoration of reality would be of immeasurable assistance in raising the level of debate and discussion within our game, and better equip us to tackle the myriad problems it faces and the issues that dominate it.
When the facts are laid out and presented, and no-one disputes them for what they are, that has a cleansing effect that can only be for the greater good of us all.
Many journalists and commentators have asked, repeatedly, when Celtic fans and those of other clubs will “move on” from these matters and our answer has always been the same; we will move on when people deal with objective fact and reality as it is and not as certain people and institutions have spent four years pretending it to be.
Here we are at the point where we can conclusively and definitively put these matters to bed. All it will require is that others acknowledge them as the simple truths they are and conduct themselves in a manner that reflects that.
The matter of Resolution 12 does not end with these findings.
This issue was never about Rangers; it was concerned with the SFA and the overall governance of our national sport and there are issues in relation to that which have yet to be explored. There are still people and institutions that can be held to account for their own role in this, and the Requisitioners aim to see that they will be.
The questions that arise from this finding are many, and answers on those matters are still sought. The Requisitioners have one last card to play and they’ll do so in due course, but in the main the central question, as it relates to the eligibility of Rangers to play European football in 2011/12, has been answered in full, to the satisfaction of all.
Congratulations to the guys who made this happen. Their campaign has been long and laborious, tougher than most of you reading will ever know or could imagine. They’ve endured hardship, stress, frustration, anger, threats, impatience, doubts, lies and smears. They’ve tolerated all of it to bring us the answers and to force others to face the truth.
This is their victory.
We can bask in it, and warm ourselves with it, and we can use it to drive a sledgehammer through the wall of deceit that has been standing in front of us these past four years, and all of that we’ll do, but ultimately it is theirs and it belongs to them.
We cannot give them all that they deserve but our thanks and our respect for the job they did were all they ever cared about anyway.
Well, you certainly did it guys.
So thank you.
Love and respect to you and yours, now and forever.
The Resolution 12 guys have gotten their hands on some more t-shirts and you can purchase one by clicking on the link below.
They deserve nothing less. They earned it.
