Spiers on Sport: Green and Murray should both testify at SPL probe

Graham Spiers

Tuesday 25 September 2012

I am still trying to get my head around the senselessness of Charles Green and Rangers FC refusing to have any truck with the SPL’s investigation conducted by Lord Nimmo Smith into the alleged EBTs misdemeanours at the club.

Nimmo Smith has been widely quoted in the past few days, but one plea he made that has virtually gone unnoticed was that anyone associated with Oldco or Newco Rangers, who believe they have a plea of mitigation to make about the club, should come forward and speak to the commission.

What are Rangers so scared of? Why did the club obfuscate in passing on relevant documentation? What is there to hide? If Rangers are innocent of an alleged dual-contracts scam – and they may well be – then why does the club not step forward and argue its case? At one stage, with a week to go before the commission’s preliminary hearing of September 11, Green and Newco Rangers were prepared to go and talk to Nimmo Smith. But, with a day to go, they swiftly changed their mind. To quote Nimmo Smith verbatim from his preparatory notes on the Rangers hearings to be held in November: “Oldco and Rangers FC will continue to have the right to appear and be represented at the hearings and make submissions as they see fit.” A few pages further on in his notes, and applying his desire to have all evidence and all voices considered in this saga, Nimmo Smith adds: “We [hope] that Oldco, Newco and any other person claiming an interest and wishing to appear will give intimation to that effect. We wish to emphasise that the doors remain open to Oldco and Newco to appear and be represented…” Never mind Charles Green’s antics, what about Sir David Murray? Given Nimmo Smith and his commission’s desire to establish clear blue water between itself and the SPL, what can possibly stop Murray from coming forward to give his side of the story? Nimmo Smith chose his words carefully in terms of testimony about EBTs: “…any other person claiming an interest…” In this Rangers saga, I can think of no viable person who suits those words more than Murray, the man who set the Ibrox club on the fateful course of EBTs in the first place. Murray avows that Rangers are innocent. He claims this is a stitch-up by people – whoever the heck they might be – to damage Rangers. Murray says the EBTs, the famed “legal loophole” to paying taxes, were used properly and legitimately. I severely doubt Murray’s interpretation on this but, more than that, I want him to be given his chance to come before the commission to protest his and Rangers’ innocence. Can someone provide a single valid reason why Murray would not to come before – or present evidence to – Nimmo Smith? The SPL and SFA have been flawed in their handling of the Rangers case – everyone can see it. But the SPL is trying to make up for that by ensuring that its claim that Rangers FC warrants an investigation will be a claim carried out with the utmost impartiality and clarity. You have to be a conspiracy theorist of fantasist proportions to somehow believe that Nimmo Smith and his two QCs, Nicholas Stewart and Charles Flint, are “agenda-driven” or “biased” in any way. This commission will once and for all cut through the cant and farrago of this case and reach a judgement on all its available evidence. Nimmo Smith, Stewart and Flint, apart from their renown in judicial matters, appear to have impeccable credentials. This is a costly exercise for the SPL, but it is worth it. Personally, I will very happily embrace this commission’s guilty or innocent verdict on Rangers, for those very reasons. In the EBTs/dual contracts controversy, Rangers face two imminent announcements: the tribunal on the so-called “big tax case” and then the Nimmo Smith hearing. The two are subtly linked: one is about EBTs and alleged tax evasion, the other is about player contracts and disclosure. This story, with its claim and counter-claim, is more complex than anyone could imagine. Rangers could win one case and lose the other, or win or lose both. My own hunch, given what I’ve been told, is that Rangers have been in the wrong. But far more able scrutineers than me might find otherwise. Why Rangers FC, Green or Murray would not want to go before Nimmo Smith and present their case, remains baffling.

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Spiers on Sport: Green and Murray should both testify at SPL probe

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