FORMER Rangers FC administrator David Whitehouse will today go to court in a bid to seek a criminal investigation into the conduct of police officers and Crown Office staff over their failed attempts to prosecute him for fraud over the purchase of the club.
His legal team will enroll a motion that seeks to use new material divulged by prosecutors for their argument that there is a case to answer that individuals attempted to pervert the course of justice in the attempt to prosecute him and that a criminal probe should be launched.
In September, as part of multi-million pound claim over wrongful detention by Mr Whitehouse and former administrator partner Paul Clark, Lord Malcolm ruled that there remains a case to answer against the Lord Advocate under European human rights laws.
Mr Whitehouse has argued that the actions of police and prosecutors has damaged his reputation of being a first-class financial professional and led to a £1.75m loss in earnings.
The pair from Duff and Phelps faced high profile criminal proceedings in the wake of Craig Whyte’s 2011 Ibrox takeover from Sir David Murray and its subsequent sale before a judge dismissed the charges.
Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark were appointed as Rangers administrators in February 2012 and four months later the club's business and assets were sold to a consortium led by Charles Green for £5.5m.
Both have been pursuing a case against Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC, former Police Scotland Chief Constable Philip Gormley claiming alleged wrongful detention and for breaches of articles 5 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
READ MORE: Lord Advocate faces Euro human rights claim over Rangers fraud arrests
Mr Whitehouse, 52, of Cheshire, is seeking £9 million damages and Mr Clark, of Surrey, in excess of £5 million.
Both were detained in November 2014 and later charged by police investigating the businessman Craig Whyte’s takeover of the club in 2011 But the case was dropped after a court hearing before judge Lord Bannatyne in June last year.
Lord Malcolm ruled in September that there is no case to pursue the Lord Advocate in a civil action under 'common law' although the case can be examined as an alleged breach of human rights laws. That is expected to be the subject of an appeal.
Mr Whitehouse's lawyers have previously accused prosecutors of bringing criminal charges against Mr Whitehouse to "disguise" their lack of evidence against him and for “grossly exceeding their powers” and “going beyond errors of judgement”.
Now his legal team will claim before Lord Malcolm at the Court of Session that police already had evidence which showed that he was not a conspirator in any fraud and the case was pursued in a calculated and dishonest manner.
They claim to have evidence of misconduct in the way that the investigation was carried out which should spark a criminal investigation and prosecution. That included allegations prosecutors concealed a "huge volume" of evidence that would exonerate both Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark.
A source close to the case says it revolves around the allegation that of "irrefutable evidence of innocence was concealed".
It will make a fresh claim that protected privileged material was accessed and relied upon for the basis of the prosecution.
Two years ago Duff and Phelps’ London legal firm Holman Fenwick Willan was awarded £500,000 costs after police and prosecutors were found by the High Court in London to have “abused state powers” by carrying out an illegal raid and siezing privileged documents not covered by a search warrant while investigating the takeover. It led to calls for a Scottish Government review of procedures.
Judges ruled that the search warrant was of "excessive and unlawful width" and that the raid could have been avoided if the legal company had been "forewarned".
Lord Carloway, the Lord Justice-General and other senior high court judges had decided the search warrant issued by Glasgow Sheriff Court on December 4, 2015 was itself "unlawful".
In August, Police Scotland was ordered to pay £130,000 legal costs to Mr Whitehouse in connection with his damages claim in a case that revolved around the argument that Police Scotland’s justifications for pursuing Mr Whitehouse were "wrong and had to be fundamentally changed".
Among the challenges contested in a summary decree, was a claim described as false by Mr Whitehouse that he had attempted to pervert the course of justice by lying in witness statements about his knowledge that Mr Whyte planned to sell off rights to three years of future season tickets to investment firm Ticketus in a bid to raise £24 million as part of his bid to buy Rangers from Sir David Murray.
Last year, Mr Whyte was cleared of taking over the club by fraud at the end of a seven-week trial at the High Court in Glasgow.
Fraud charges were previously dropped against Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark, ex-chief executive Charles Green, solicitor Gary Withey, David Grier, senior partner at accountancy Duff and Phelps, as well as ex-Rangers director Imran Ahmad.
Police Scotland said: "As this is part of an ongoing legal action, it is inappropriate for us to comment at this time."
The Crown Office said: "The court proceedings are active so it wouldn’t be appropriate for us to comment."
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel