Oh, i meant to post this on the Rangers board too, looking for an honest opinion from both sets of honest fans, and hopefully not the usual wummary involved.

Thanks

Yip.

I don't see it at all.

I think they have a bill that's due, one that was unearthed while completing Governance before the Whyte take over.

The problem is that Rangers have admitted that they are speaking to HMRC about a seperate tax issue, over and above the £2.8 million being discussed.

But what it comes down to is this, why would a guy take on a club if it's potentially going to go down the tubes. Fact is, nobody but HMRC and Rangers really know what's going on.

And because it's Rangers, the speculation will go on and on until it's resolved.

Oh! there seems to be every possibility, they found great difficulty paying a £35,000 legal bill and allowed that information to become public.
Many who would normally be patient creditors will now be putting pressure on the Rangers and taking legal action.
Dark days at Ibrox.

Alot of talk has been made about this £2.8mil, and about a 6 figure sum being "ringfenced", but what about this apparantly massive £20+ mil bill too?

Theres been a lot of press made about the financial situation at Rangers but i dont see a club or Rangers size being totally wound up.

At worst go into administration or something (like Portsmouth) but i really cant see it happening.

Anyone else got other information im missing?

Id like to hear the views of honest Rangers fans too so i can hear both sides of whats happening and have an honest discussion about it all

theres a good chance of them going into administration this season as the big tax bill is reported to be around 49mil!!

the failure to pay 2.9mil is huge indication that they have no money

they paid there latest instalment of 500k for jelavic late last friday it was over 1 month late

so there is deffinatly money troubles there

they will get 10 point deduction right this season of and start again next season

just my guess tho.....

£34m & £15m in penalties due to HMRC.£2.8m set aside for a tax liability,with papers served.No CL money.£1/2m due on the Jelavic sale,Bainzo suing for £1.4m and paying off Lloyds with advanced cash from ticketus.
The SFA being 'invited' to expand on their version of FFP interpretation having allowed RFC entry to Euro comps.
Media House pulling out of Express Group news(Herald,Evening times).

More to follow but less to follow follow.

I think they will be too big to fail - there will always be a rich supporter who will come in and sort things out - they are more than likely waiting for them to go into administration, agree a deal with their creditors and write off large amounts of debt before getting involved though.

If Portsmouth can be saved from the brink, then i think Rangers will not have to worry too much (long term). In the short term it might be a bit stressful for them.

The truth lies in Whyte's business history.

It is there if you look for it. It indicates how he normally 'makes his money'.

Mouse-

Enron,Lehman Bros.,Major UK banks only survived with govt. funding.Iceland,Ireland,Greece?The Euro is about to pop.

Liquidation is not really a good outcome for any of Rangers debtors. It would only get Whyte and Ellis themoney they put in and HMRC would reclaim less than what is due.
Admin though is also a problem for Whyte as the administrator will likely call on him to forego his stake in a similar manner to the Italian guy at Livingston.

There is now a real chance of Rangers going into administration or even liquidation.

This bill could be anything up to £49million, if reports are true (wouldnt be the first time that the media have got it wrong!)

However, these things tend to take a long time. It'd unlikely we'll see this resolved in under a year. Unless HMRC get their skates on and move things at a faster rate than usual.

I don't think that Rangers will ever go to the wall though. But Administration would cost them a 10 point deduction. I'd hope we'd be able to capatalise and win the SPL with that!

The winners of this seasons SPL go into the group stages of the champions league so winning the league this season is massive. For both old firm clubs, but probably Rangers even more so now.

That's why Craig Thompson is giving the gig in Ibrox on Sunday.

The possibility is there if they do owe over £50 million. Don't think Whyte could put up that kind of cash. But the money might be payable over decades like the bank loans.

Even with a 10 point deduction a couple of old firm wins at the buisness end of the season could see rangers competing for the title again, and possibly europe.

Think rangers are too big to fold as a club and they would likely do a leeds utd if things went t1ts up big style.

would be funny tho

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comment by pearsonification (U5624)


posted 1 hour, 43 minutes ago

The possibility is there if they do owe over £50 million. Don't think Whyte could put up that kind of cash.

---oo---

I disagree. According to Keith Jackson, Craig Whyte is a billionaire and his wealth is "off the radar".

What a load of wishful thinking.
There is not a lot about this in the press simply because very little is known and what is known doesn't help. Any comments about what will happen is pure speculation.
However there are some facts out there. Well sort of facts.
Let's ignore the wee bill and concentrate on the big bill.

1. HMRC has indicated there is a tax bill due and have demanded payment. I am pretty sure no amount has ever been quoted. That is confidential and only those involved will be able to confirm the amount.
2. RFC have denied that the amount is due stating that the "loophole" was a legal tax avoidance method at the time.
3. The "case" being heard is not an appeal. It is a tribunal. The tribunal will determine if the tax bill is due for payment, in part or in full or not at all. Appeals come later.
4. The appeals process could drag on for years.
5. HMRC are trying to tighten up the legal process in football. It used to be that HMRC were preferred creditors but not any more. Now that football clubs are coming ever closer to admin and liquidation, they want to protect themselves by closing down as many loopholes as possible. This "case" is doing just that and is a test case. They could just as easily have targeted an EPL team.
6. Rangers are convinced that they will win the case.
7. Whyte obviously looked very carefully into the tax case before he bought the club. He may be a lot of things but he is not stupid. He wouldn't have ploughed that money in without being confident he would not lose the tax case.
8. The tax case is unlikley to be a win or lose decision. It will award some wins to HMRC and some to RFC. Therefore the likely result will be some kind of settlement to HMRC. But nowhwere like the amounts being talked about in some (Celtic) websites.

Now this is all my opinion and I'm sure many people will disagree. And to be honest, if I went over this I would probably change some myself, but can't be bothered,
The point I am trying to make is that it is very unlikely that this will be sorted anytime soon and that when it is sorted, the settlement will not be the liquidation or adminstration event many are predicting. It won't help Rangers but they will not go out of business.

...i'm not a financial whizz Bond but as regards point 7 on your list i don't think Whyte will lose much sleep over the quid he has 'ploughed' in...very little evidence to suggest he has put ANY of his own cash in ...

Mexican, he did pay off the loan to Lloyds. About £20m. Now I bet he has simply moved the debt to his own bankers, but the debt is in the name of his company now (assigned from LLoyds) of which he is the major shareholder. So actually you are wrong.

..who says he paid the debt?

Seriously?

I'm wrong..never said I was right

Sunday Mirror, January 27, 2008 -

Defaulty Towers

A MILLIONAIRE who fled Scotland under the shadow of a tax probe and £4million debts has returned home after buying a Scottish castle.
Craig Whyte, 39, vanished nine years ago, leaving behind a controversial career, lawsuits and multi-millionpound debts.
The Scots entrepreneur once dubbed “the next Richard Branson” was accused of failing to pay his employees’ wages and was at the centre of a massive tax investigation by the Inland Revenue.
But after fleeing to the tax haven of Monte Carlo, where he continued with an extravagant lifestyle, he has now made an equally extravagant return to Scotland.
Whyte is back home after forking out a colossal £720,000 for a Scottish castle. He and wife Kim have snapped up Castle Grant in Grantown-On-Spey, Moray.
The ancient ancestral seat of the chiefs of the Grant Clan, the 15th-century castle sits on a small hill around a mile north of the town.
It contains dozens of rooms, one of which is a massive dining hall. In recent years, it has been a popular visitor attraction for Grants from all over the world, who see the castle as their ancestral home.

After being listed alongside the likes of David Beckham and Prince Naseem Hamed as among Britain’s richest young people in 1999, Whyte’s fortunes took a dip.
His business career started early and by the time he left school, he had amassed a personal fortune of £20,000 by playing the stockmarkets.
Whyte acquired Vital UK in 1993 and built it into a conglomerate. But it went into voluntary liquidation in 1996, with debts totalling £600,000
In 1999, a report hinted that he had failed to register some of his employees for PAYE tax.
The tycoon ended up at the High Court, where his legal team admitted he owed £3.5 million to a single creditor. It was around the same time that members of the 700-strong workforce from his company network even threatened to riot over unpaid wages.
But despite the allegations and court cases, he insisted in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Mirror at his Monte Carlo home eight years ago that he was debt-free. “I don’t owe anyone any money – least of all the taxman,” he said.

The Herald, June 17, 2004 -

AN ex-associate of one-time Scottish business “whizz- kid” Craig Whyte has surrendered his right to practise as a chartered accountant after admitting professional misconduct.
Kenneth Murdo Macleod, former director of VH Investments, one of Whyte’s many companies, has agreed to resign from membership of the 15,000-strong Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland following a disciplinary probe lasting several years.
Millionaire playboy Whyte fled from Glasgow to Monaco in 1999 after a government investigation was launched into his business activities. Then aged 30, Whyte, once dubbed “the next David Murray” , was alleged to have masterminded a scheme to hive off hundreds of thousands of pounds to companies in an offshore tax haven.
A winding-up petition over unpaid wages was launched against his firm, Vital Hold-ings, at the high court in London.

Daily Mail, February 17, 1999

AT THE age of 27, Craig Whyte was fabulously wealthy and had a lifestyle to match his millionaire income.
But three years after he amassed a fortune by hiring out security guards, his business is the subject of a Government investigation and he has debts believed to be around £4million.
As former employees pursue him through the courts to recover unpaid wages, Mr Whyte has left Scotland and set up home in Monte Carlo.
The young tycoon was once heralded as the shining star of Scottish industry and listed in the top ten of British ‘Rich Kids’.
His personal wealth of £20million put him ahead of millionaire rock stars such as the Gallagher brothers of Oasis.
The cash financed luxurious living, including penthouse in a Glasgow waterfront development, a sleek black Mercedes convertible, a powerboat berthed on Loch Lomond and an executive box at Rangers Football Club.
But Mr Whyte now owes some £3.5million to one creditor and is officially ‘insolvent’. He is believed to have created a complicated network of companies extending far beyond Scotland and was responsible for transferring large quantities of money to interests in the tax haven of the Bahamas.

Companies with which Mr Whyte was connected have folded, staff and suppliers are unpaid and massive VAT and income tax bills are outstanding.
Liquidators have already passed a report to the Department of Trade and Industry and it is believed that the department of Customs and Excise has launched an investigation.

His former security company, Vital UK, based in Dennistoun, Glasgow, collapsed with debts of around £750,000 in 1996. Disgruntled employees of another connected firm, Vital Holdings, are lodging an action at the High Court in London in an attempt to win back unpaid wages.
Whyte launched Vital Holdings when he was 23 and embarked on a process of acquisition, travelling the country buying up plant hire and security businesses to bring under his commercial umbrella.
At the height of its success in the early Nineties, his security and plant hire company employed around 700 people, but by 1995 it had gone into voluntary liquidation.

A former acquaintance said: ‘When Vital was going belly-up, all of its assets were sold to a company called Pelcroft.
‘Then they were immediately sold to another company which immediately sold them to another company, and on each occasion Craig Whyte organised the transfer.
‘He was just putting things out of reach.’ When Vital UK crashed, it owed £33,000 in VAT, £66,500 to trade and in expenses, and £280,000 in income tax.

The flamboyant entrepreneur, who was once thought of as the next Richard Branson, had a rapid rise to prominence in the business world.
The former Kelvinside Academy pupil began playing the money markets while still at school, buying his first shares at the age of 15 with the proceeds from various part-time jobs.
By his mid-20s he had secured the lifestyle he had dreamed of, spending with great passion.
It seemed he was destined for greatness, and development agencies, desperate to foster the entrepreneurial spirit, held him aloft as a glowing example.
Perhaps they should first have examined his business track record more closely.
After leaving school he signed up for a course in accountancy but dropped out and never went back to complete it.
A company he founded at the age of 20 quickly hit the rocks and was sunk by large debts.

‘You might say it was a valuable experience,’ he said philosophically at the time.
‘I would prefer that it hadn’t happened but it has reduced the chances of it happening again.’ Last night, a spokesman for the liquidators said: ‘We have obviously tried to contact Mr Whyte on a number of occasions but we are informed by his lawyer that he is living abroad.’ A spokesman at the Glasgow base of Vital Holdings, which continues to trade, said Mr Whyte was unavailable for comment.
The spokesman said he had issued a statement disputing the allegations made against him and declaring his intention to seek legal redress.
He added: ‘I can’t say where Mr Whyte is at the moment, but he is speaking to his solicitors about this.’

..bit of previous for you Bond..you 'bet' away mate...

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Craig whyte has tweaked the old Vera Lynn number and is due to release ' There will always be a Rangers'

All monies raised will go to the tax bill.