CHIEF executive Stewart Regan last night explained why the SFA was leaving it to the SPL to investigate accusations that Rangers made undisclosed payments to players.
Former Ibrox director Hugh Adam said undisclosed payments were made via Employee Benefits Trusts (EBT) in the early 2000s and possibly as far back as the mid-1990s. That could contravene both the SFA and the SPL's rules on the disclosure of payments to players, but only the SPL has launched an investigation into what players received during Sir David Murray's ownership.
"The Scottish Premier League have initiated their own investigation and they are clearly challenging if the club have complied with both their own rules and the rules of the Scottish FA. If they find that there has been evidence of wrongdoing and they sanction the club, then the club's right of appeal is to the Scottish FA. It would be foolish of us at this stage to get involved in dealing with this until the process has been exhausted.
"If there is evidence of wrongdoing and Rangers are sanctioned by the SPL because of that, then evidence of that would challenge our own articles [the SFA's rules, known as the Articles of Association] and we would deal with it at that time."
The SFA could be dramatically sucked into the Rangers/EBT investigation if Adam's allegations were proved, because the governing body's president, Campbell Ogilvie, was the secretary at Ibrox for the majority of Murray's reign and would stand accused of being complicit in whatever went on. Regan would not discuss that, pending the findings of the investigation, but he stressed that the use of EBTs were not illegal per se.
"An EBT is a scheme used by other businesses, not just football," he said. "It involves money being paid into a trust and that trust making voluntary rather than contractual payments to individuals as loans. Rangers have taken advice on that and their view is that they chose to operate that scheme in the early part of the last decade.
"It's clearly part of the HMRC investigation and the 'big' tax case and what it hinges on is the definition of 'payment to player'.
"The SPL have initiated their own investigation into this, and not because of the existence of the EBTs because that has been disclosed in annual reports. It's the fact that there is a belief that some of the contracts were not fully disclosed and some of the 'side letters' which were deemed not to be contractual were not disclosed. That's what is being investigated."
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