So much of what we “know” about the goings on in Scottish football over the last few years comes from leaked sources, including documents.
A lot of it is second hand, even third hand, information.
A lot of it is useful; one major article I wrote, on the TV deal and how Doncaster rigged it, was written using leaked information as background source material, which I then had to stand up by linking to stuff that was in the public domain.
But as with all such information, there’s some of it which you can never use, because the source of the documents is uncertain and because the information in them is so sensitive and “close-hold” that you would put sources at risk if you did, or even expose yourself to the possibility of criminal prosecution. Even with that story, which is amongst the most controversial I’ve ever published, there were things I had to leave out.
One of them I can only describe as explosive. Having seen the evidence I can say with certainty that Doncaster was up to no good, but that information can’t be backed up by public information and will remain hidden until it can.
I tend to believe that when information that was secret is uploaded to where anyone can see it then it’s no longer secret; it becomes public whether it was intended to be or not. That’s what Wikileaks and other websites are for, after all. For a long time you could download oodles of compromising information from Scottish football’s dark year of 2012 on Scribd; I have my own extensive catalogue of stuff from that period, including the Five Way Agreement, the No Title Stripping Guarantee, the outline of Whyte’s Project Charlotte and much else.
I am not surprised to see internal SPL documents now online. I am not surprised that some of the bloggers, like Johnjames, have chosen to use them to cast light on the Nimmo Smith inquiry and other affairs. I said in a piece two years ago that nothing that happened in that time will forever remain a secret; too many people are in possession of too much information and all of it will eventually become public. It’s inevitable.
The SPL emails which have found their way onto the net are illustrative in more ways than one.
I’m going to go over them now and what they mean … and try to place it in the wider context of the LNS affair.
I believe these emails are legitimate. I believe their publication is in the best interests of Scottish football. I believe fans have a right to know, and use this information in their deliberations about the future. This is important stuff. It casts a light on this whole affair.
The Lord Nimmo Smith Inquiry Was Never About Sporting Integrity.
The most interesting thing which emerges from these emails is not actually a secret and it never was, but I think it helps to have it on the record and in the proper context nonetheless. It’s important that before we start tearing LNS apart that we recognise what the purpose of the inquiry actually was.
Please take note that no-one is suggesting that we appeal the Lord Nimmo Smith verdict; as I said on the day of the tax case verdict itself, in a lengthy article which you can read here if you haven’t seen it yet, we’re significantly beyond that at this point.
Since it was published, the LNS verdict has been spun outrageously by various people with various agendas. The governing bodies did it to “close the book” on the case. Certain clubs did it in an effort to “move things on”. The media did it because certain PR firms pushed the line that the verdict had somehow exonerated those at Ibrox and Hampden. Sevco fans embraced it because it meant historical titles wouldn’t be taken off Rangers.
Here’s the crux of it though; in terms of what LNS was asked to investigate, he and his commission found Rangers guilty on all counts. Guilty, okay? Of concealing documents. Of lying to investigators. Of deliberate obstruction. The club was fined for that behaviour.
The LSN inquiry was set up to examine only the issue of whether registrations rules were broken.
That is a cast-iron fact.
Sporting integrity was never part of the remit. LNS never said that EBT’s did not confer a “sporting advantage”, although many people still persist in the belief that he did. What he said was that a deliberate failure to properly register players didn’t.
You may or may not think that an absurd suggestion, but that’s not relevant to the point here. The sporting integrity issue was not covered at all.
LNS was deliberately limited to cover only that issue, and the SFA was on hand to provide their own interpretation of what should happen when failure to register players is discovered. That, of course, is a bomb just waiting to go off one day; the Sandy Bryson definition of what constitutes a punishable offence is palpably absurd.
The SPL email exchanges make it abundantly clear that the inquiry itself was not supposed to look into other aspects of this affair. It was set up to do one thing, a very small thing, covering a very narrow issue. And within that framework it reached a verdict.
Major matters, the ones of greatest significance, were excluded; the legality of clubs paying players via tax fraud, the “governance” of the SFA, the registrations procedures, who knew what and when … none of that was ever given a look. LNS was set up to give the appearance that a sweeping inquiry had taken place when no such thing happened.
The validity of the inquiry itself was also fatally compromised when the so-called “appellate body”, the SFA itself, gave evidence in the case and allowed its officials to steer those sitting on it to draw conclusions which defy logic and credibility.
When I say we’re significantly beyond LNS I mean it.
LNS has no bearing on where we go from here.
Some People Did Want To Appeal The LNS Verdict On “Sporting Integrity” Grounds
If you don’t think there’s an appetite for going over this issue again, you ignore the fact that this appetite always existed and never went away.
At least two members of the SPL board – Ralph Topping, who I lacerated on here last week before this information came to light and Duncan Fraser of Aberdeen – believed that the verdict and the scope of the inquiry were drastically at odds with the severity of what the club had done, and made that plain.
Topping clearly thought an appeal should be considered whereas Fraser believed it would be a waste of time, given that the key issues were never covered by LNS in the first place.
Eric Reilly of Celtic was out of the country, on holiday, when the decision about an appeal was being taken; that was clearly deliberate. He offered no view on whether there should have been an appeal, because he knew it was futile and the numbers were already against him. Celtic’s position on this is crystal clear and has been from the start. There is no question that Reilly would have voted in favour of an appeal in this matter.
Stephen Thompson of Dundee Utd voted against an appeal and suggested it was time to “draw a line under it.” For all Sevco fans lacerate this guy and his club, they took the view that sporting integrity should be subservient to an easy life.
I understand it. And I utterly condemn it.
Their supporters have more integrity in their fingertips than their board does combined.
No surprises where Kilmarnock are concerned.
Michael Johnston voted no to an appeal in under five minutes. His own fans are still disgusted with his stance on all this today.
Reilly, Fraser and, to my surprise, Topping all believed that sporting integrity should have primacy here. They were all appalled by the way the scope of the investigation was narrowed to exclude key evidence and the issue of whether EBT use itself was a violation of the spirit of the sport. You can read disbelief in Fraser and Topping’s emails that the verdict has levied on the club a slap on the wrist fine but left titles and trophies on the record.
After an email from Petrie, pointing out that the “no sporting advantage” issue wasn’t considered in relation to EBT’s, Fraser wrote this damning section;
“Rod’s point that we did not suggest a sanction and were clear in leaving it to the Commission rules out any appeal on the grounds of “the punishment fitting the crime”. In summary, I do not believe that the Commission came to the correct decision in terms of sporting advantage and we have no grounds for an appeal based on the punishment being too lenient or it appears sporting advantage given the narrow line they pursued. Therefore reluctantly I have to draw the conclusion that the process is at an end.”
With the verdict of the tax case in, the issue of sporting advantage is now primary. EBT use has found to have been a violation of the law of the land. The documents were concealed with the purpose of perpetrating a fraud. UEFA statutes on tax liabilities payable were pissed all over by a club that knew those liabilities would be due if what they were up to was discovered. This is the guts of the matter, and it’s what’s troubled many people from the start.
Topping summed it up as such:
“My question therefore to all Board Members is this: are you happy that in not appealing you are effectively saying that competitive disadvantage to all SPL clubs is immaterial and that you are happy with the scale of the fine?”
That’s the question fans have been asking from the start and it’s the one we’re still seeking an honest to God answer to.
LNS wasn’t about sporting integrity … but right from the start a lot of people thought it should have been.
Those are the people who will have a huge say in what happens next.
A Lot Of The Fans Have Spoken. Are Clubs Actually Going To Listen To Them?
Celtic fans have been making their voices heard on this issue right from the start, but they have been joined by those of Dundee Utd (whose club, as I said, were in favour of “drawing a line” and moving on), those of Aberdeen, Hearts, Hibs and others.
I believe the supporters at Kilmarnock are right behind us on this, and could well influence their current board.
It is clear that this is not, as Regan described it yesterday, “vested interests” pushing on behalf of just one team or one board of directors. Supporter’s organisations up and down the country are appalled at what has come to pass here, and with the Supreme Court verdict laying it all out there that Rangers were, indeed, guilty of tax evasion for a decade there’s an appetite to see that the sport is put first and that sanctions are applied for that.
We all know LNS was a sham. Clubs have been aware of it from the start.
The disbelief which Fraser expresses in his email was shared outside of the SPL board, but the clubs in the main were never given a chance to discuss the verdict far less the scope of the inquiry itself. Clubs outside of the SPL, who were effectively bullied into dealing with the issue of Sevco’s league place and who bucked the mood of the media and in Hampden itself, were never asked for their views as they weren’t members of the league, as if the league was the only body affected.
Some of those clubs have been sanctioned – some in crippling terms – for doing less than what Rangers did in a single one of the hundreds of games that took place during the EBT era. On many occasions as many as half the Rangers team which took the pitch was improperly registered, and this includes in Scottish Cup matches against the SFL teams.
They should have been involved in the process from the start. The investigation should have been set up by the SFA and the Court of Arbitration of Sport ought to have been the final appellate body. But the SFA wanted this nowhere near them, because questions would have arose about their own involvement. Nevertheless, although set up as the “court of appeal” they wanted to steer LNS in whatever direction they wanted that inquiry to go and so Bryson was allowed to give the most scandalous and corrupt interpretation of the rule book we’ve ever heard. Campbell Ogilvie was allowed to sit on the witness stand and blatantly lie.
Fans know this reeks. Clubs know that it reeks. But whereas the fans have spoken, the clubs themselves remain silent. I know of one club who has decided not to get involved because they’ve been told, by the governing bodies, that it’s pointless to sanction a dead club … believe it or not, the people pushing the Victim Lie have admitted that it’s exactly that and are using that as a deflection tactic in this case. How low can you go?
Are clubs content to be “led” like this? Up the garden path with a ring through the nose?
Or are they going to take some responsibility and restore integrity to the sport?
How Long Will We Have To Live With This Farce? It’s Not Going Away You Know.
Fans are furious. The lobbying of their clubs has only just started.
There’s no way the pin goes back in the grenade.
The entire coming season is going to be defined by this.
Clubs are going to have to answer these questions, and explain why they either want something done or don’t. Hiding behind “legal advice” isn’t going to cut it.
What fans want is an inquiry into all of this, including the SFA’s role.
The clubs can set that up with a simple vote. Let the SFA’s lawyers argue the case on their behalf, but let some learned legal gentlemen and ladies go through the whole shoddy affair. Another put-up job won’t do. The fans will want to see the precise scope of the inquiry set out in advance.
There are those who will say, who will continue to say, this is about one club.
This moved beyond the scope of an inquiry into the conduct of Rangers the second the first documents were published that showed that the man who would go on to be the SFA President had signed the original piece of paper which started the EBT ball rolling in the first place.
From there, we had the appalling spectacle of the governing bodies trying to present Sevco’s ascension to the SPL as fait accompli. They then tried to bully and bribe the smaller clubs into putting them into the Scottish Championship.
From a very early stage this has not been about one club but about the corporate governance of the game as a whole and the more we find out the more the reek of corruption grows. Rangers was merely the monster the SFA and SPL allowed to grow and cause havoc.
But the issue is, and has always been, how it was ever permitted in the first place.
That issue belongs to all of Scottish football, and the coming campaign 2017-18 will be defined as much by what happens off the field as by what takes place on it.
Change is coming.
Those who won’t play a part in it will be swept away when the rising tide rolls in.