SPORTS Direct supremo Mike Ashley is seeking a judicial review of a decision by Scottish football's governing body to pass Rangers chairman Dave King as "fit and proper".
The first hearing in the action against the Scottish Football Association was due to be heard at Edinburgh’s Court of Session, on Friday, December 11. It has been put back to February 4, next year.
The case surrounds the SFA's decision in May to pass Mr King as "fit and proper" allowing him to take his place as chairman of the club.
Two months earlier, Mr King led a successful bid to oust the previous board at Ibrox. But the SFA needed time to assess King's suitability, given his tax convictions in South Africa.
Mr Ashley, who also owns Newcastle United, is already embroiled in a separate court action to have Mr King thrown in jail accusing him of breaching a gagging order.
The contempt charge has been set for December 9 at London’s High Court and if convicted a sentence of 30 days in prison could be handed down by the judge.
The issue surrounds Mr King allegedly discussing his relationship with Sports Direct during an interview in July.
Mr Ashley's gagging order stopping Rangers from blowing the lid off controversial details of contracts with his retail chain went UK wide in June.
Mr Ashley served legal papers in the case against the SFA last month calling for the judicial review of the SFA ruling made on May 19.
The SFA are expected to defend their position.
There were two hurdles within an 11-point SFA 'fit and proper person' list of 'relevant facts' for officials, office-bearers and board directors that he had to overcome.
The first in the "illustrative and not exhaustive" list concerns whether the person had been convicted in the last 10 years of an offence liable to imprisonment of two years or over. In 2013, Mr King agreed to pay £45m as a settlement after pleading guilty to breaching 41 criminal counts of South Africa's Income Tax Act surrounding non-payment.
The second concerned whether the person had been a director of a club in the five years preceding any insolvency event. Mr King and fellow would-be director Paul Murray were directors within the five years before the liquidation of RFC 2012 plc, the new name given to the original operating company Rangers Football Club plc.
The SFA Articles of Association stated the board "reserves its discretion" as to whether a person is fit and proper after "due consideration of all relevant fact which the board has in its possession and knowledge".
In making it's decision to pass Mr King as 'fit and proper' under its Articles of Association in May, the SFA said it had received specialist legal advice in Scotland and South Africa to confirm it was satisfied he passed the test.
The SFA's decision came a month after Lord Woolman made an order under section 216(3) of the Insolvency Act 1986, giving leave to Mr King to be a director of Rangers International Football Club PLC and to be concerned or take part in the club management.
Mr King has consistently insisted he would prove he would pass any fit and proper person's test to take a position of importance in the boardroom, saying he has a "unique status of credibility".
The board of RIFC plc headed by chairman Dave King has put forward a resolution calling for the removal of the voting rights of any shareholder who is involved in running another club at the annual general meeting later this month.
That action was said to be a result of Rangers being fined by the SFA for breaching so-called dual ownership rules relating to the Sports Direct supremo.
Rangers declined to comment on Mr Ashley's action.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here