Rangers administrator admits inappropriate talks with Craig Whyte described as 'like lads in the pub'

Club business liquidators BDO are suing the joint administrators of the club Mr Clark and David Whitehouse for £56.8m saying a flawed cost-cutting strategy meant creditors lost millions from the handling of the club’s financial implosion.

BDO are claiming that during conversations with Mr Whyte that details of rival bidders were divulged when the should not have been, while the former Rangers owner was championing a bid by Charles Green's Sevco consortium.

READ MORE: Rangers administrator said a fans bid for the club would be 'akin to herding cats'

The assets including Ibrox and training ground Murray Park were eventually sold to the Charles Green-fronted Sevco consortium in the summer of 2012 for £5.5m while the oldco was heading into liquidation.

The claim comes nine years after the Craig Whyte-controlled Rangers business fell into administration in February, 2012 and then liquidation after he was at the helm for just nine months leaving thousands of unsecured creditors out of pocket to the tune of millions, including more than 6000 loyal fans who bought £7.7m worth of debenture seats at Ibrox.

Mr Whitehouse and Mr Clark admit there had been no action to force the transfer of shares from Craig Whyte before best and final bids were being received at the end of May, 2012.

In the Court of Session, Kenny McBrearty QC for BDO questioned why Mr Whitehouse did not know the terms of the arrangment between Mr Whyte and Mr Green.

"And yet, blind of that information you're prepared to disclose to him information about the bidders. On what basis do you think that was a good idea," he asked.

Mr Whitehouse said: " Yes, I think it was, it was a pragmatic, the only solution that we had to, to advance the CVA."

Rangers' largest creditor, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), effectively blocked a CVA proposal which would have allowed the club to trade its way out of administration worth £8.5m. Preventing the business from being plunged into liquidation, would have kept the club within lucrative UEFA competitions.

A CVA also enables companies to reach an agreement with creditors about how debts could be repaid and provides for partial or full repayment, depending on what the company can reasonably afford to pay. The CVA proposal offered less than 10p in the pound to creditors.

"If he is the key to unlocking the CVA, I think it is totally unrealistic to assume that he is going to transfer over his shares to a bid about which he has no visibility," said Mr Whitehouse.

Mr McBrearty referred to a transcript of meetings between Mr Whyte and the Duff and Phelps administration team which was the result of an secret recording.

An earlier hearing heard members from Duff and Phelps tasked with saving Rangers referred to a leading player at the club with a four-letter word in one of the meetings.

Mr Clark told lawyers that he accepted it was “unwise” to describe the star, who was not identified, as a “complete tw*t”.

Mr McBrearty said: "If one is to read the whole of this transcript, what I suggest to you is that you are an officer of this court, you were in a position of reporting Craig Whyte to various authorities in relation to various matters, and yet this transcript reads like lads in the pub. Would you agree with that characterisation." he asked.

Mr Whitehouse said: "I think it's a quite open sort of conversation about how we've received the administration. I think it's an open dialogue in terms of some of the challenges that we've faced and, I mean, it will be for the court to decide, is the answer.

"One of the things that administrator has to do, a good quality competent insolvency administrator, is to learn how to engage with people. And you have to be a bit of a chameleon, and, you know, he distrusted me as much as I distrusted him I know that very well."

Mr McBrearty said: "Looking back now, having read the transcript. Do you think that this was an appropriate conversation, or conversations to be having with Craig Whyte?"

Mr Whitehouse said: "Elements of it are appropriate, other elements, you could say, with hindsight, were not."

The transcript of a recording of a May 1 meeting shows how Mr Whyte first introduced Charles Green's Sevco consortium to the administration team saying: "They're talking about beating any other bid that's on the table".

He told them: "They can provide us with proof of funds tomorrow, so they say."

Mr Whitehouse went on: "But what I would say is, again it's against a backdrop of various events where, I was trying to rebuild a relationship.

"In April, I've had a meeting with the police to provide a series of documents and information to the police in relation to various conduct and on my way to Glasgow, I stopped at a service station, and saw the headline 'administrator passing over dossier on Craig Whyte to the cops today', and I was absolutely appalled by it. "And that was the police leaking, to the media. I made a formal complaint, I found out through sources in the media, the name of the police officer who had passed the information to the reporter, but it was deeply prejudicial to what I was trying to achieve in the administration.

"I expect a level of confidentiality when you do things like that and it was entirely undermined, which meant there was a high level of bridge building with Craig Whyte and I think that might actually be referred to in the transcript. It was difficult, it was very difficult."

Mr McBrearty said: "What's being said, Mr Whitehouse is that you allowed the situation to develop in which Craig Whyte had an inappropriate degree of control over the bidding process, you agree with that or not?

Mr Whitehouse replied:"No."