The liquidated club are at the Supreme Court today

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It's judgement day for the liquidated huns at the Supreme Court regarding EBT's and non payment of tax.

It's all about the rangers ! Live from 9:45

http://www.supremecourt.uk/live/court-02.html

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Court ruled in favour of HMRC.

They cheated, they were found out, a good day for justice.

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Jim Traynor has some amount of backtracking to do. But don't expect it after all he now employed as the PR guru at Ibrox.

After Rangers' biggest ever win one question remains.. why?
AS RANGERS won their fight with the taxman over their use of EBTs, it's time to ask why so many people went after the club since it has been proved they done nothing wrong.

BYJAMES TRAYNOR
08:32, 21 NOV 2012

RANGERS have had many massive triumphs in their time, especially the 3-2 win over Moscow Dynamo in the 1972 European Cup Winners’ Cup final.

But yesterday’s result will surely go down as the most significant in their history. It wasn’t even played out on a pitch.

This victory came inside a stuffy office somewhere along Edinburgh’s George Street.

But even though no one kicked a ball, Rangers’ 2-1 win in the First Tier Tax Tribunal represents one of their greatest successes.

And it should bring an end to one of the longest and, given the behaviour of so many mean spirited and malicious individuals, certainly one of the most shameful tax cases in Scottish history.

Murray Group Holdings and Others were contesting a potential tax liability of £87million (made up mostly of penalties) and if there is to be a bill it will come to no more than £2m but probably even less.

This will be in combined penalties against individuals who may be guilty of minor breaches of technicalities.

But the point is Rangers were brought to their knees by a debt which was never real.

And they became victims of a case which should not have been allowed to run in the first place. Long and complex, it has cost something like £5m in legal fees. But at the end of it all there remains one unanswered question: Why?

What was the point and what were the real motives behind the zeal with which some in HMRC, and the media, tackled this case? This is not to say the Revenue shouldn’t try to reclaim money when they believe it’s due. It must be stressed they should but there are aspects of this case which deserve to be scrutinised closely and perhaps they will, if some of them people denigrated and wronged decide to take legal action.

This case has been about money but there has been a greater cost.

There has been a heavy human cost, too. Innocents, Rangers fans, for instance, have been damaged and so have former directors, especially Martin Bain.

And what was his crime? He inherited the EBT controversy but managed to hold his club together at a time when it seemed the entire country was pounding at the red facade of Ibrox. But there was no gratitude. Bain, and others, were wrongly accused of malpractice. They, Rangers, were all guilty. Fact.

Their persecutors, an alarming number of other clubs and their fans, should be hiding in shame this morning, or breaking cover only to apologise. Fat chance.

Blind hatred and poison has saturated this case which could actually have paid off for HMRC. They were offered £10m two years ago to settle but refused, probably because they wanted a trophy win to set a precedent which would allow them to pursue hundreds of other companies for untold millions.

But they failed. Yesterday two of the three judges ruled Rangers’ EBT system was a form of loans and not taxable after all.

And yet, because the tax man insisted Rangers owed them £50m, a catastrophic chain of events then unfolded.

No one wanted to touch a club with a potential bill of that size hanging over them and eventually Rangers fell into the wrong hands, the hands of a man who really didn’t pay tax and who then caused one of Europe’s biggest clubs to slide into liquidation.

But let’s be clear on this, the Revenue’s demand for payment, which it has now been declared invalid, started Rangers’ slide towards the precipice. Companies who sell cups of coffee and mobile phones can escape payments for hundreds of millions but Rangers?

No chance. They were chased and backed into a corner for piddling amounts by comparison. Amounts they didn’t even owe. Of course David Murray is responsible for selling but he was being pressed by a bank, who wanted rid of the club. They didn’t like the bad publicity their squeezing of Rangers attracted and Donald Muir, their man on the Ibrox board, wasn’t about to let Craig Whyte’s offer pass by.

The rest is history but it is a bitter and twisted chapter in a story which shines a light on a side of this country which should embarrass us. So many people wanted Rangers shut, or at least cut down and now they know there was nothing illegal in what was done with EBT payments they should take a good look at themselves.

Sadly, they just wanted to believe Rangers were guilty and it became popular belief that this lot really did owe almost £90m in tax. People spoke matter of factly about Rangers being tax cheats and there was such a groundswell against the club few were willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The facts were trampled as the crowds rushed to dance on Rangers’ grave.

Even people who should have known better were swept along in the rush to accuse and condemn Rangers or anyone who dared say, ‘hold on, shouldn’t we wait until the real financial experts rule.’

But now we all know the truth, although we haven’t a clue as to the identities of those at the centre of this sorry saga.

Bizarrely an anonymised form of the tribunal’s ruling was published yesterday revealing that evidence had been delivered by Mr Red, Mr Purple, Mr Turquoise, Mr Yellow, Mrs Scarlet and other colourful people.

Neither Quentin Tarantino nor the makers of Cluedo could have done a better job of disguising characters yet the identities of those who had received loans in the form of EBT while at Rangers were leaked routinely to
journalists and bloggers.

But the Revenue didn’t want the names of any of their people out in there in the public domain. Why? Because we’d then know who had rejected the £10m? Or was it felt they had to be protected for other reasons?

But there are names on various emails and documents in circulation and maybe one day soon there will be greater transparency as a case which has brought so much strife to the game is finally put to rest.

We can argue until the end of time about whether the Rangers in question still exist or whether the history with all its glories, defeats, highs and lows remains intact. But one crucial truth cannot and should not be lost.

Rangers, we know, were stricken, taken down by a fantasy tax bill. They were declared guilty before trial.

Rangers, as a brand, was tarnished because HMRC said they owed tax on EBT payments which the club had always argued were loans. Yesterday two of the three judges agreed. So HMRC, who had insisted an initial tax and National Insurance bill of £37m, which climbed to £87m, be paid, were left with nothing. They say they’ll appeal but it could be argued they’ve caused more than enough damage.

Besides, even if they’d won their case yesterday they still wouldn’t have got anything out of the Rangers they had pursued. They were forced into liquidation, remember.

And the real bottom line in all of this? Rangers’ closure was all so unnecessary and the turmoil and upheaval caused could have been avoided. Despite accusations Rangers did nothing wrong. Pity the same can’t be said of all those self-proclaimed experts, bloggers and journalists.

Rangers will be clobbered they had said. The verdict will be damning. Rangers will be shown up as cheats, they squealed.

It’s clear now who the guilty parties are and Rangers are not among them.

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And how to go out with the one of the most ironic newspaper columns ever seen by man or beast

James Traynor: Why this is my last ever newspaper column

BYJAMES TRAYNOR
00:01, 3 DEC 2012

Unfortunately, there has been the last twisted and bitter year during which Scottish football, unable to deal with the Rangers crisis in a civilised manner, has tried to tear itself apart. All in the name of sporting integrity, of course.

Actually, for the last couple of years some of the most bilious types have been allowed to emerge from the shadows and spew invective that sadly became regarded as fact, even though what they were saying and writing wasn’t even close to being definitive. Or honest. Overnight all sorts of anonymous bloggers became experts. These champions of decency had all the answers. They knew better than anyone else. They said over and over Rangers would be done for cheating the tax man.

They were wrong, the Rangers Tax Case blog in particular. Yet he/her/they stated: “This blog has been accurate on all of the major points of the case except the one that matters most to date – the FTT (First-tier Tax Tribunal) outcome”.

Excuse me? Accurate on all the major points except the bit that matters most. And that’s all right is it?

That’s a bit like a team manager saying after a defeat: “Hold on, I picked the right team and I believe my tactics were correct. So the result doesn’t really matter.”

Dolts. The result is everything. If any of the Rangers Tax Case bloggers are trained lawyers, would you want them to defend you in a court of law?

Even now so many – and I include some fellow journalists – still cannot bring themselves to accept Rangers did not cheat the tax man by using EBTs.

One journalist declared it to be “a government conspiracy” when he heard the ruling in Rangers’ favour.

Perhaps in time more will be written about this kind of hack and the rabid desire to help bring down Rangers, a fierce desire that, sadly, was widespread. Actually, I’m sure more will be written about them.

Just when did they become consumed by such eye-popping rage? Was it always there, a dormant fury against Rangers and their fans, who deserve enormous credit for having saved their club, just waiting for the catalyst?

Now they can’t help themselves. They can’t stop foaming at the mouth and we can be sure their determination to have titles stripped will go into overdrive.

They need some kind of victory or they might explode and that would be terribly messy. All that bile all over the walls and streets.

Unfortunately reason was never allowed to be a player in this grotesque game, which quickly became dominated mostly by incoherent imbeciles fuelled by all that hatred.

And let’s not forget how some with telly platforms were prompted by those bloggers and ill-informed commentators. Stupidly they allowed themselves to be duped by supporters with dangerous agendas hidden under the banner of integrity.

And the result? Some of the most shallow and infantile drivel ever written. These egotists are so into
themselves they’ve no regard for the safety or wellbeing of those about whom they have written some awful and completely inaccurate pieces.

Despicable, pathetic little creatures craving some kind of recognition but lacking in conscience and morality.

I’m so sorry they’ve had to be thrown up into the same piece as some of the true greats and gentlemen of world sport.

However, that’s it. My work here is done and I’m glad – but just for the record, I’ve not been sacked or made redundant. I was asked to remain but my conscience won’t allow me to stay in our profession.

The kind of journalism needed by the country, never mind sport, no longer exists in enough of the media outlets.

But as I’ve said, the good memories of all those sporting greats will always outweigh the negatives, especially those that bubbled to the surface throughout this last year.

Thanks to sport’s real heroes I’ve had a ball and thank you for reading while I was with The Herald, the Daily Express and the Daily Record.

Good luck to you – and be careful about what and who you read in the future.

There are people out there calling themselves by different names.

But that’s not the bit that should worry you. They are calling themselves journalists.

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Let the title stripping commence

Judgement - https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/do...3-judgment.pdf