The Violation Of SFA Regulations (That We Know Of)

This case involved, amongst other things, the definite violation of SFA rules.

The SFA maintains that it is impartial here; it is not. It never has been. They cannot act as a “final avenue of appeal” as CEO Stewart Regan has said, whilst they are, themselves, up to their necks in this affair. And this verdict makes it clear that they are exactly that.

One of the elements of what Rangers did here involved the concealment of documents. The SFA played a role in that. Campbell Ogilvie was on the SFA board the whole time, even as he sat on the Rangers board which ran the scheme. We know, in fact, that it is his signature which adorns the paperwork which established the original EBT scam, the Discounted Options Scheme, in the first place. He helped oversee a similar scheme at Hearts.

It is not enough, and it has never been enough, to say that Ogilvie should have “recused himself” from this affair; he wasn’t acting in an individual capacity.

He was acting as an official at the Scottish Football Association, which he went on to become chairman of. Campbell Ogilvie didn’t need to “recuse himself” here; the organisation at the heart of all this ought to have taken itself completely out of the process.

Think of Scottish football today as a crime scene, where the investigators have arrived to find a picture that is complex and chaotic, for that’s exactly what it is. We know that a crime has taken place. That much is established as a fact.

We also know the names of some of those who were involved, in one way or another.

Separate those people from everyone else.

The organisations they work for are involved in this somehow.

There are only two possible explanations for how they are involved. The SFA are either victims of this crime or they are part of it … they should not, under any circumstances, be involved in its investigation and prosecution either way.

SFA regulations on the financial disclosure were not followed.

Regulations on the declaration of contract details were ignored.

There was a cover-up.

The SFA has a statutory right to investigate those matters and prosecute the club on its own for those offences, but the second it decided not to it abrogated its responsibility for any further involvement. It ceased to have any rights to act is judge and jury after the fact. It should have acted as a “rubber stamp” on the ultimate decision and any appeal should have gone to the Court of Arbitration in Sport.

It was absolutely wrong for the SFA to set itself up as a court of appeal in a matter where its own rules had been violated. If could have prosecuted such a case, it has that power, but the final decision would have rested, then, with CAS.

The second the SFA decided it wasn’t going to prosecute the case itself it gave up the right to further involvement.

And that should have extended to offering testimony. Why was its “head of registrations” ever called to the Lord Nimmo Smith inquiry? Why was he allowed to go there and give the evidence he did if the SFA was going to act as a “court of appeal”?

Their conduct throughout all of this stunk to high heaven, and it still stinks today. They cannot pretend non-involvement or non-interest. They are involved whether they like it or not. A full inquiry into just how they are involved is clearly required.

Are they innocent victims of a failure to disclose documents and meet the regulations … or did they assist Rangers in a policy of concealment the highest court in the land has decided was tax fraud? Are there facts which are pertinent today about which we are still unaware?

Were they, in fact, a party to everything that went on at Ibrox?

Until that, above all, is examined and that question definitively answered they cannot be treated as an impartial observer in these events … and clubs ought not to treat them as such.