Dave King last night admitted he has not held any discussions with the Scottish Football Association over the governing body's fit and proper person criteria, but remains confident he would not encounter any difficulties if he was to return to the Rangers boardroom.
The former Ibrox director flew into Scotland on Friday and said he had taken soundings about any hurdle he may face. But yesterday he moved to clarify his comments which, he said, related to the regulations of the Alternative Investment Market, the stock exchange Rangers International Football Club is listed on. Having held six meetings since his arrival, King continues to work towards a solution to the boardroom crisis at the club, which has only two directors - James Easdale and Brian Stockbridge - and which has seen fans rail against the current regime.
King, who watched Rangers defeat East Fife 4-0 yesterday, said: "All of the meetings have agreed to be confidential. But I regard each of them as very constructive in what I'm hoping to achieve. It would be premature to speculate that I'm there yet. I haven't even approached the SFA."
SFA chief executive Stewart Regan, was asked about King on BBC Radio Scotland yesterday. The Johannesburg-based businessman recently settled his long-running case with the South African Revenue Services after admitting to 41 breaches of the Income Tax Act.
"To say we have no issues with him as far as the fit and proper test is concerned is a little premature," Regan said. "No dialogue has taken place with the club as far as Dave King's compliance with article 10 goes. It is very clear whether someone complies or not with our fit and proper regulations. It is difficult to make a firm assessment now - I would need all the facts laid out. There has been no disclosure about what the background to Mr King actually is."
With former Rangers director Paul Murray having made a legal request to the club for the beneficial shareholders behind Blue Pitch Holdings and Margarita Holdings to be revealed, Regan also said if the club's former owner Craig Whyte is found to have any continuing involvement at Ibrox, the SFA will be forced to act.
As part of the five-way agreement that saw Rangers' membership of the SFA passed from Rangers Football Club plc to Sevco Scotland in the summer of 2012, Charles Green gave an undertaking that Whyte had no role in the consortium that bought the business and assets of the club.
"The [SFA] board made the decision that Craig Whyte wasn't a fit and proper person in terms of our articles and we were concerned that he wasn't involved in any way with Rangers," said Regan.
"We have a legally binding indemnity given to us by the consortium at the time, fronted by Charles Green, Malcolm Murray and Imran Ahmad that Craig Whyte is not involved in any way with Rangers and that was the key requirement which the board needed to have prior to that membership being awarded. We are able to challenge the membership in the event that Craig Whyte is involved."
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 hereComments are closed on this article