FORMER Rangers owner Craig Whyte says he is confident any investigation into his time in charge of the Ibrox club will find no wrongdoing.
A year after the company that ran Rangers went into administration, Whyte said he would happily co-operate with any investigation looking into his takeover and the subsequent insolvency.
And he insists he can still sleep at night despite being disgraced over the club's financial problems.
Whyte has previously claimed representatives of former club administrators Duff & Phelps – under its previous entity MCR – were aware he was raising more than £20 million through selling off season-ticket income to the London-based Ticketus to facilitate his £1 takeover of Rangers from Sir David Murray in May 2011, and pay off an £18m debt to Lloyds.
Duff & Phelps subsequently negotiated a sale of the club's assets to a consortium led by Charles Green for £5.5m. It was thought at the time this was in the form of a loan, to be repaid by the club with interest by 2020.
Mr Whyte said he did not live in fear of arrest saying: "I welcome any fair investigation. And if I was a crook or a wide boy, do you really think I would be stupid enough to go in and do anything remotely crooked at a high-profile football club? The whole notion is utterly ridiculous."
Earlier this month, HMRC lodged an appeal against a tax tribunal finding in favour of Rangers' past use of Employee Benefit Trusts.
HMRC claimed the scheme, which was used from 2001 to 2010 to make £47.65m in payments to players and staff in the form of tax-free loans, was illegal.
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 hereComments are closed on this article