Everyone enjoyed Walter Smith’s testimony to the Craig Whyte trial yesterday. How could we not? It was sterling. It was insightful. It was positively surreal. A man who had helped wreck the club took the stand to testify that it was someone else’s fault.
He blames the Motherwell Born Billionaire, of course, but he took care to spread it around.
In one moment that must have invoked hilarity far and wide, he actually blamed the banks themselves for allowing Rangers to get into such ruinous debt, whilst at the same time trying to get them to fund one last grand transfer splurge of £18 million. This time, they said no dice because he was no longer dealing, through Murray, with the criminally reckless directors at BOS, but with the more careful, pointed, management team at Lloyds.
Let’s not even cover McCoist.
His testimony offered us nothing new. He is a joke figure now, a guy whose career as a manager detonated so spectacularly he now refers to himself as a “football analyst” rather than as a fledgling boss. He brought no real insight; his selective memory in any number of areas pretty much voids his usefulness as a witness. I have wondered exactly what purpose putting people like him on the stand fulfils. With him finished, I am no closer to working it out than I was earlier in the week.
You know what, though? The best is yet to come.
I understand exactly why the prosecution wants Alastair Johnston on the stand. I also understand why Donald Findlay will be rubbing his hands together with glee at the prospect. This guy is going to be a sensational witness, in every way possible.
Alastair Johnston was chairman of the club when Craig Whyte bought Rangers from David Murray for £1, but it’s pretty clear that this is “in name only”. He was also the head of the “independent board” whose job it was to scrutinise the people who were interested in buying the club. In the end that committee did more serious investigating work, early doors, than anyone except for the Bampots. They certainly had a huge lead on the media.
He protested to Murray, but did nothing more.
He did not disclose that information to regulators or to the SFA, as he had a fiduciary duty to do.
The best this guy can say is that they knew what Whyte was, they had concerns about what he might do, but they did nothing whatsoever about them.
Johnston is a guy I have a great interest in. His testimony should be amazing. He publicly fell out with Murray over the sale, and the two have allegedly not spoken since. He has put the boot into the former owner more than once. He is clear that Whyte isn’t the only person to blame for this, but he has changed his tune several times on matters of great importance to this discussion, as I am certain Donald Findlay will be well aware. Johnstone was standing up for the role of Lloyds in 2010, pointing out that they were the only people keeping the lights on at the club, but by 2011 he was blaming them for forcing the sale to Whyte.
He also blamed HMRC for the way they treated the club.
In one memorable interview, he wondered, aloud, why the club’s debts hadn’t simply been written off with those of other parts of the Murray business empire, with the tax-payer ultimately eating the pill. Nothing more clearly displays his myopia and hubris, and that which was prevalent inside Ibrox at the time, than that idea.
These people never believed in running a sustainable business.
There’s that other thing too, that “supremacy” guff. Some of Johnstone’s language about Whyte has been seriously inflammatory at times. He famously “No Surrendered” him during the excellent Mark Daly documentary on the Motherwell Born Billionaire when he took over. You could tell from Daly’s reaction to that how surprised he was that such an openly sectarian statement came out of an allegedly serious individual’s mouth.
Johnston’s fall out with Murray will be the subject of much scrutiny, and that alone will make it worth paying attention to. The prosecution wants him there to highlight Craig Whyte’s past, and how some people were aware of it in advance.
If you’ve watched Johnston on any of the documentaries about Whyte he’s very direct. He harboured grave reservations from the get-go and it’s no coincidence that he was turfed off the board shortly after the takeover.
He can contribute something to the prosecution case.
But I bet Findlay can’t wait to have him up there. Johnston, as much as anyone, can burst the bubble about David Murray being “duped.”
He can shatter the idea that Murray handed the club over to someone he believed in and trusted. He can give a board’s-eye view of the club and how the disgraced ex owner ran it before Whyte came along which will help in the on-going demolition job on Murray’s reputation.
He’ll also have to answer some questions, under oath, about EBT’s.
Very interesting indeed.
Most interesting, for me, is this; Johnston was one of the first people to be thrown out of the club when Whyte came in. This is because he and others were actively concerned and were searching for answers. Others directors were to follow, over the course of Whyte’s tenure, until he had a boardroom team of mostly hand-picked people who would do as he said even as he was running the clock down on the whole club.
Few who were at Ibrox when he arrived were still there on the fateful date when he put the club into administration. One of them is back at Ibrox right now, presiding over another series of scandals. It will be very interesting to hear what, if anything, Johnston has to say about Dave King.
This could be one Hell of a week to come.