Darkness Had Fallen Across Ibrox By 2010. Did The SFA Know That?
Phil’s initial questions are in relation to issues which arose in 2009. Think about that. His questions about when the SFA became aware of Rangers’ side-letters is devastating. He clearly believes that those issues were known to the SFA as early as that year.
HMRC’s investigation into Rangers had already begun, and it is certain they knew side contracts existed. They had taken ownership of a ton of information seized from the club in police raids during the 2007 raids on Ibrox, Fratton Park and St James’ Park, in relation to the Lord Stevens inquiry into bungs. The one they were looking at in relation to Rangers was the Jean Alain Boumsong deal … they found nothing to prosecute on but they did tumble onto the tax scam.
And everything the police found was handed over to HMRC.
HMRC began investigating shortly thereafter.
As it was the SFA who were supposed to have all the information relating to the contracts on file there is no way HMRC would not have contacted them.
I have long suspected that the existence of the side-contracts became known to the beaks at Hampden a long time before the drip-feed of information into the public domain by the Rangers Tax Case blog and the subsequent BBC investigations began. It makes sense that they would have known in 2009. It makes sense that HMRC would have told them.
We know who was running the association at the time.
At the helm was George Peat, who’s loyalties are well known. His number two was none other than Campbell Ogilvie, whose name was on the documents which set up EBT’s in the first place. The chief executive was none other than our old friend Gordon Smith. His tenure was disastrous and is most notable for the fact that whilst he was in office a book came out in which he’d written a chapter that alleged that his employers had long been biased against Rangers.
His personal relationship with David Murray went back years.
Is it difficult to conclude other than that the SFA decided not to do anything about what they knew.
The EBT scheme continued for another year. The club kept it going in spite of the investigations. They only stopped when they were presented with the tax bill in 2010. It was Year Zero moment, a story Phil himself broke wide open.
The SFA knew Rangers were breaking the rules. Someone inside the association concluded that it was better to ignore that. There must have been discussions, and a calculation about the enormous consequences of voiding matches going back nearly a decade … I can well understand why people with the club close to their hearts chose not to act.
But that put all of Scottish football in jeopardy, as I’ll explain next.