Or could it not actually be possible that they know the actual facts and the actual law - instead of all these online bloggers and muppets with an agenda that seem to have had Rangers hung drawn and quartered right from the outset ...

Be interesting to see who picks up the bill for this.

Had they played by the rules they'd still be in the SPL.

we did play by the rules
seems you all forget to read that part


Oldco Rangers were found guilty by Lord Nimmo Smith's commission of failing to inform the league body of side letters relating to (legal)Employment Benefit Trust payments that were issued to dozens of first-team players, even though it was all in the accounts submitted every year

heads will be rolling at spl
whole thing has been cock up

id be embarrassed to be associated with SPL at this time ....

why havent they(Spl) released accounts yet....cant handle egg on face twice in a day???

http://tinypic.com/r/23llchy/6

I'm no fan of Rangers, but personally I've always thought this is the way eligibility should work. It's quite problematic in practice to retrospectively revoke a player's registration. You could imagine a situation in which a team makes an honest administrative error, which is uncovered months later and leads to a huge punishment. What that basically does is compound a single offence by adding other offences on top of it.

It makes more sense as far as I'm concerned to just state that any player who was deemed eligible at the time (even incorrectly) is eligible until their registration is revoked. Otherwise it's a bit like the authorities punishing a team for playing a player the authorities said they were entitled to play.

With that said I don't see how Rangers fans can seriously stick to this "the entire country is corrupt and run by Rangers hating bigots" idea now. It was a fair process with a fair result.

Why should heads roll at the SPL? Rangers were found guilty of an offence, so it was obviously legitimate to have an investigation in the first place. It's a bit like demanding that the head of a police investigation should resign for bringing a case to court simply because the defendant got off with some of the charges.

no its more like the police trying to prosecute a dead defendant

what offence were we found guilty of just out of interest

we won the case against HMRC (under appeal)
SPL decide to investigate anyway , and reached conclusion that no rules were broken and no unfair advantage yadda yadda yadda

so what were we guilty of ,

boohoo they paid their players a wee bit extra without tellin anyone is your argument it seems

What next? Rangers shirts are an offensive colour of blue? The turf is cut the wrong way?

You've got another post higher up the thread in which you write (in bold text) the precise offence that Rangers committed - i.e. they broke SPL and SFA rules on disclosing the relevant payments made to players. The payments didn't break any rules, but the failure to disclose them did. That's why the fine was issued.

I still don't see what your issue is with the investigation taking place in the first instance. There was clearly a case to answer, it was (presumably in your opinion) a fair hearing, and the matter is now settled. It doesn't become a "cock up" for the simple fact that Rangers were found innocent on some of the charges.

Rangers never won the case with HMRC either, they won the majority of cases however were still found to have owed millions of £ for the illegal ones - the ones HMRC had side contract proof that the payments were wages.

That would be like killing 47 people, only getting done for 12 of them and saying "See I was innocent" lol

The other funny thing about the Investigation was that SPL, SFA, UEFA and FIFA rules all state that a Club is a Company and yet William "Nimmo" Smith claimed that the Club were not the Company.

If the Club was not a Company then Rangers would still be in the SPL and Sevco wouldnt exist.

i wrote they ' failed to inform'

which was decided today WAS NOT A BREACH OF RULES

it wasn't a fair hearing...it was a pointless needless hearing against a company that is no longer trading and has no assetts and is being liquidated

the cock up is plain too see to anyone except the butthurt
rangers obsessed celtic 'supporters'

think we should rename the celtic support to the green n white rangers obsessives

anyhoo im away to play call of duty with a smile...will be back tomorrow to laugh at spl accounts

The SPL case was already underway - the lack of cooperation from Rangers FC delayed the investigation for months. Hence why it took nearly a year.

It's not the payments made which is the problem - it's the fact there were dual contracts (side letters) in operation and they should have been sent to the SPL - Rangers decided they were above the rules of the game and failed to do it.

Found guilty of incorrectly using EBTs;
Found guilty of incorrectly registering players;
Guilty of deliberately withholding £15m of tax/PAYE.

The soon to be deceased Rangers FC will forever be known as cheats, that is the long and the short of things regardless of whether or not titles and trophies are removed.

again...what rules were broken


spl appointed commision rules there was NO BREACH OF RULES

If no rules were broken then why was a fine levied?

This constant reference to Rangers winning the tax case is of course nonsense. The case was not brought against Rangers, but against MIH. It was also never a case of guilty or not guilty, it was not a criminal case. However, if they wish to claim it was against Rangers, and it was about guilty and not guilty, then Rangers were found to be guilty. Perhaps not as guilty as HMRC would have liked, but still guilty.

As for today, had you listened to the likes of Radio Scotland you would actually have thought they had been found not guilty. Graham Spiers made a good point earlier where he said he took the report from LNS into a quiet room and read it, and he found it damning. He then switched on the radio, the tv and his twitter account, and it was if Rangers won. The difference between the actual damning judgement, and the triumphalist proclamations by the likes of Green, McCoist and sevco fans was astounding.

Rangers were 'guilty' in the big tax case and they were guilty of cheating over 10 years in the SPL.

And of course they are a new club in the bottom rung of senior football in Scotland, with a bad manager in charge.

As a Celtic fan, I can live with that.

Here is page 1 and 2, it contains the summary of the decision - I've embolden the bits that imply Rangers are guilty - unless I'm mistaken and that is not what LNS means.

(1) Between the years 2000 and 2011 The Rangers Football Club Plc (now known as RFC 2012 Plc (in liquidation) and referred to in the decision as “Oldco”), the owner and operator of Rangers Football Club (“Rangers FC”), entered into side-letter arrangements with a large number of its professional players under which Oldco undertook to make very substantial payments to an offshore employee benefit remuneration trust, with the intent that such payments should be used to fund payments to be made to such players in the form of loans;

(2) Those side-letter arrangements were required to be disclosed under the Rules of the Scottish Premier League (“SPL”) and the Scottish Football Association (“SFA”) as forming part of the players’ financial entitlement and as agreements providing for payments to be received by the players;

(3) Oldco through its senior management decided that such side-letter arrangements should not be disclosed to the football authorities, and the Board of Directors sanctioned the making of payments under the side-letter arrangements without taking any legal or accountancy advice to justify the non-disclosure;

(4) The relevant SPL Rules were designed to promote sporting integrity, by mitigating the risk of irregular payments to players;

(5) Although the payments in this case were not themselves irregular and were not in breach of SPL or SFA Rules, the scale and extent of the proven contraventions of the disclosure rules require a substantial penalty to be imposed;

(6) Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL Rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements, nor did the non-disclosure have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play, and for this and other reasons no sporting sanction or penalty should be imposed upon Rangers FC;

(7) As noted in the Commission’s earlier decision made on 12 September 2012 there is no allegation that the current owner and operator of the club, The Rangers Football Club Limited (“Newco”), contravened the SPL Rules or could be held responsible for any breach by Oldco;

(8) In all the circumstances the Commission has imposed a fine of £250,000 on Oldco.

If The Rangers did it the SPL would blame the oldco and the The Rangers would still be okay anyway. And they would still be able to keep the Scottish Third Division title

Rangers 1 year/18 months ago had 2 options:

1. The Death to escape debts, Newco and bury head in sand and deny approach (The one they took)
2. The dignified demise and slow rebuild paying off debts way.

1. Would be basically what we seen, pile up debts, become insolvent, liquidate the old Club to avoid massive debts and the looming Big Tax Case and start up a Newco and enter Division 3. That way its a fresh start, no massive debts, no looming tax bill just a rebuilding job.

2. Would have been, fire sale in January 2012 of every big player for as much money as they could get, Pay the PAYE they owed and avoid Administration but then you still have the big tax case, wee tax case, ticketus and other bank and whatever debts to pay back(around £65million). They could have continued on into this season with a threadbare rubbish squad of players probably only capable of SPL mid table mediocrity, took their humiliations from Celtic, decided a pay-structure to pay the wee and big taxcases as well as paying back ticketus and other debts. They could probably have had a share issue to raise £10million or so to pay back that tax money from wee and big tax cases and after a few years of struggle maybe even 10 years they could have gotten back up to challenging Celtic.

Celtic chose option 2 when we were in financial difficulty from 1986-1995 Celtic were a poor Club with no money and poor players with debts and we took it, sailed through and came out the other end dignity intact and debts paid off.

Rangers could not face the embarassment or the suffering and went for the dramatic collapse, the new club from scratch quick way route with he brass neck to deny it was their fault and that they were innocent lol even crazy claims of being "kicked out the SPL" and victimised. Yes a club that VOLUNTARY went into administration knowing they stood basically no chance of avoiding Liquidation were victimised haha

The commission that reported today was never about deliberate, out-and-out "cheating". It was not about hidden payments (money in boots or whatever). The football authorities were told about the EBT payments in the company's published annual accounts. However, there were also administrative matters and the company that used to run the club has been fined for those. So be it. The payments themselves were not illicit and the club did not gain a competitive advantage because of the administrative matters.

Today's ruling also states clearly that the club goes on. The company that used to run it has been liquidated and a new company ("newco") runs it now.

Let's move on. If you didn't get what you wanted, too bad. Let's get back to actual football.

The club won the trophies.

The company owed the debt.

Fine by me

The club is the company is the club.

If the Club was not a legal entity then it couldnt actually hold possessions, so you could have actually stole the Trophies of Rangers and not get the jail then as technically they dont belong to someone/something that can charge you.

Although we all know that is BS and that the Club was a company and the Trophies belonged to them.

If your way of saying things is correct then no Football Clubs actually exist, there are only Companies who exist and the Club is nothing but a name given to a non-entity that doesnt exist - its only imagined to exist within a Football Company.

So, the company didn't buy the players for the club and entice them to sign with - shall we say - a little backhander

Scottish Football - Corrupt to the core

Unless, of course, you support a third division club who really wanted to be a third division club to show the SPL that the footballing world would fall down without them in it

I've a lot of time for you mate but this stinks to high heaven - fining a 'dead club'? Only possible in Scotland

Dead club keeping trophies - only in Scotland

Dunfermline up the creek - Armageddon on the cards?

http://www.dafc.co.uk/articles/20130...208031_3092986