POLICE Scotland has been ordered to pay £130,000 legal costs to a former Rangers administrator in connection with his damages claim for his detention during a investigation into the club’s takeover by Craig Whyte.
The payment comes as David Whitehouse is suing Police Scotland and Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC. He is seeking £9million in damages.
Joint Rangers administrators David Whitehouse and colleague Paul Clark from administrators Duff and Phelps 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.
Mr Whitehouse’s lawyers claimed that throughout the period of detention, there were no reasonable grounds to suspect that Mr Whitehouse had broken the law.
Mr Whitehouse, 52, claims that police obtained evidence without following proper legal procedure. The lawyers say an indictment was issued against him without any “evidential basis”.
The latest case 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 Craig 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.
Details of the award came in a hearing over a Police Scotland Court of Session challenge to the amount of the costs which was due before Lord Malcolm.
Mr Whitehouse said that “a great deal of time and public money had been wasted” in dealing with the claim defence issues.
“That resulted in the court requiring the police to pay the substantial costs associated with their mistake,” he said.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: “We are currently involved in three related ongoing court cases. As these are ongoing it is inappropriate for us to comment, however it should be noted that as far as the financial aspects of one of these cases is involved, the sum eventually agreed upon had been independently audited following a challenge to the sums charged in the account.”
The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service was unable to confirm details of the costs case.
Mr Whitehouse’s “wrongful detention” claim for damages is continuing.
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.
The payout comes two years after 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 while investigating the takeover.
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