David Grier: Rangers figure fails in £14m fight over fraud case fail

Mr Grier, 58, from London, who had also demanded a public apology from officials said the arrest had been a "career ending moment".

Court of Session judge Lord Tyre has already ruled there was no “probable cause” to prosecute Mr Grier and the continuing case was trying to establish malice and the amount of damage caused.

But Lord Tyre has said that Mr Grier had not made out a case that there was malicious prosecution.

And now a Court of Session appeal against the decision has been thrown out.

The Lord President, Lord Carloway, in delivering the ruling said that police, in any case, could not be sued for malicious prosecution, because they were not the prosecutors.

He said: “The court is unable to fault the Lord Ordinary in the inferences which he drew from the primary facts found."

He said the occurrence of mistakes "does not normally constitute a conspiracy or give rise to an inference of malice".

He added: “It will refuse the reclaiming motions and adhere to the Lord Ordinary’s interlocutors of 11 January 2022.”

The case came after ex-Rangers administrators David Whitehouse and Paul Clark of Duff and Phelps (above), agreed a settlement estimated to be around £24m after an agreement in their malicious prosecution case against the Lord Advocate and the Chief Constable was reached "extra-judicially".

Mr Grier, an insolvency expert also with Duff and Phelps, was charged in 2014 along with a number of other men during an investigation into how Mr Whyte bought the company that ran the Glasgow football club three years earlier.

He said police arrested him at his home in the south of England at 6am and drove him north to Glasgow.

Mr Grier, a key figure in businessman Craig Whyte's purchase of Rangers from Sir David Murray for £1 in May 2011, said that many years after his arrest, he still had no idea why he was prosecuted over his involvement.

Mr Whitehouse, Mr Clark, Mr Grier and four others were subjected to detention and criminal proceedings in relation to fraud allegations in the wake of Craig Whyte's disastrous purchase of Rangers and its subsequent sale before a judge dismissed all charges.

The police investigation was launched against a backdrop of the controversial nature of Mr Whyte's nine-months in charge which ended with the club's business going into administration with debts soaring over £100m while the team ended up relegated to the bottom rung of the Scottish football pyramid.

Mr Whyte had agreed to take on Rangers' financial obligations, which included an £18m bank debt, a potential £72m 'big tax case' bill, a £2.8m "small tax case" liability, £1.7m for stadium repairs, £5m for players and £5m in working capital.

But he controversially helped fund his takeover by setting up a loan in advance from London-based investment firm Ticketus against rights to three to four years of future club season ticket sales in a bid to raise £24 million and pay off bank debt as part of a share purchase agreement with Sir David Murray.

Mr Grier has always said he was unaware that London finance firm Ticketus funded Mr Whyte's controversial purchase of the club by buying up rights to future season tickets.

But officers suspected Mr Grier, of London, had broken the law during the sale of the Ibrox side and the businessman was charged with fraud, conspiracy, a charge under the Proceeds of Crime Act and a charged of attempting to pervert the course of justice - before the case was dropped.

Prosecutors and the police argue that they had a degree of reasonable cause to pursue Mr Grier.

The Chief Constable argued that officers formed a "reasonable belief" that he was implicated in criminal wrongdoing and had assisted in a fraudulent scheme.

In lengthy findings Lord Tyre previously said he was also "not persuaded" that are there was anything that supported an "improper motive" in the the police and prosecutors pursuing a case against Mr Grier.

He said that an assessment of the damages had been made on the hypothesis that Mr Grier was found to have been malciously prosecuted.

"I have not so held, although I have made a finding that there was no objective reasonable and probable cause for either the detention and charging of the pursuer or his subsequent prosecution."

In relation to the claim against Police Scotland, he said: "I find that the police had no motive other than to bring an individual perceived to be a criminal to justice.

"It was emphasised by the court in Whitehouse v Lord Advocate that malice was not to be inferred from, among other things, incompetence, poor judgment, lack of professionalism or recklessness.

"Much of the police investigation suffered from these faults but that is not enough to meet the test.

"No 'illegitimate or oblique motive' or deliberate misuse of the process of the court has been demonstrated.

"In so far as the police recommendation to charge the pursuer might be characterised as reckless, I use that word in the sense of over-zealousness, as opposed to indifference as to whether the case against him was supportable and I do not therefore consider that it is recklessness of a kind from which an improper motive can be inferred."

In August, last year, former Rangers chief executive Charles Green won over £6m from the Lord Advocate in a settlement over his £20m claim for being wrongfully prosecuted in the club fraud case.

Mr Green, whose Sevco consortium, bought the assets of the club business in liquidation nine years ago for £5.5m was due to receive compensation after Crown lawyers accepted he was subjected to a malicious fraud prosecution.

Mr Green, now based in Dubai, was told four years ago he would face no further proceedings in connection with the case as prosecutors said there is "now no evidence of a crime".

Mr Whyte, who ended up being the last man standing in the long-running case, was cleared in the summer of 2017 of all charges in connection with his 2011 club purchase.