Title Stripping Is Not Something That Should Happen. It Has To.

Paul McConville wrote an excellent summary of this at the time; he concluded that the SPL would never “appeal” the Lord Nimmo Smith decision, but that they were perfectly entitled to. He said that would never happen, and Neil Doncaster agrees.

He believes the matter has been set aside.

Paul also specifically said that the Upper Tier Tribunal appeal – the one which has just been completed at the Supreme Court – would have no bearing on that decision even in the event that Rangers were found guilty of everything people have been alleging for years.

And, once again, he is correct.

But LNS is a smokescreen. I’ve covered it here because I had to, because it would be the subject of every comment on this piece and the basis by which the verdict just in would be ignored. But to all intents and purposes, LNS is a bust.

No-one is asking that the decision he made be appealed.

The LNS inquiry’s entire remit was set by the SPL to exclude evidence, not to examine it. The SPL allowed the so-called “appellate body” to give evidence. It offered the very people being prosecuted a guarantee of no major sanctions in the event the judgement found them guilty. It was an investigation into a fraud governed by another one.

We are significantly beyond LNS here.

What’s required here is an inquiry into the whole shady affair, the LNS inquiry included.

Let’s not forget here that his Commission found Rangers guilty on all counts, but it based its recommendations as to what should be done about that on incomplete information and a series of brazen lies. It was concerned only with the registration of players, and relied in no small part on an interpretation of the rules which govern those which was offered to it by someone with a vested interest in spinning it the right way.

Ogilvie was involved in the EBT affair at every juncture. In allowing him to be questioned Nimmo Smith became party to the fraud in which the SFA President was involved. In accepting his testimony in the Finding, LNS based in no small part on his veracity.

When that happens in a court of law we call it perjury. It is an offence that not only results in the punishment of those guilty of it, but can over-turn all the judgements on which it is based. If we were arguing to appeal LNS that’s the argument we might use.

But as I said, we’re beyond Nimmo Smith.

We’re not talking here about an appeal. We’re talking about a full-scale examination of the whole affair, and those who were involved in it. Scottish football has, for the past five years, operated as if this was a minor aberration. That, too, is part of what’s gone wrong. The scam didn’t end with Craig Whyte and the liquidation of Rangers any more than it was born with the birth of Sevco. All these issues are intertwined now.

At the heart of this are two organisations, the SPL and the SFA, which had a vested interest in the outcome, and in a “no title stripping” guarantee. Even had the SFA been able to act as an appellate body in this matter I do not believe they would have been impartial; they couldn’t be. Had LNS not gone the way they wanted it, I still don’t believe title stripping would ever have taken place because on its own the SFA would never have done it.

This was too big for their slippery fingers. It remains so today. The only way that a verdict can be arrived at which settles this matter, once and for all, is if the matter is removed from the remit of the governing bodies and placed in a truly independent one that can examine not only the single, narrow, issue of the side-letter but what the legality of the whole affair was, what the impact was on the integrity of the sport, whether UEFA as well as Scottish rules were broken and whether or not the SFA ought to have been allowed to play a role in LNS and matters peripheral to it, or whether or not its own officials were involved in these affairs.

Such an inquiry would not be cheap.

I would be willing to bet that there would be widespread interest in crowd-funding some of it if necessary.

It would not be done in a day.

But this matter has already dragged on for five long years, and Scottish football fans have learned to be patient.

But it is necessary; in fact it is essential if Scottish football is to get beyond this affair. It is something that simply must happen, and if the governing bodies will not willingly set that inquiry up the clubs must take that matter out of their hands.

For more than ten years Rangers operated by fraud and deceit. Amongst those involved are people working at Sevco today. The organisations that were supposed to protect the rest of the game have been protecting the guilty ever since.

This was a crime against the exchequer, but more than that, it was a crime against football itself.

These are the facts of the case, and as of today they are undisputed. We know that Rangers with-held money from the tax man. We know they covered that up. We know that they lied about doing so. We know they continued to lie, long after the truth was established. We know that footballers were improperly registered here and abroad. We know they were paid by the proceeds of a scam. These are some of the most serious offences in the history of sport on this island.

And the punishment must reflect the seriousness of the crimes.

Their guilt is now proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

It will be the job of any inquiry to decide what the sanctions must be.