A new twist in Rangers controversy: Club accused of misleading SFA on secret deals

Rangers stand accused of failing to properly register players after a former director revealed secretive payments had been consistently excluded from contracts lodged with the SFA.



The embattled Ibrox club are awaiting the outcome of the First Tier Tax Tribunal which will determine the legality or otherwise of Employee Benefit Trusts (EBTs).



Regardless of whether Rangers are hit with an additional bill of £49million from the so-called 'big tax case', it appears such payments were kept 'off the books' - in direct contravention of SFA registration rules.



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Former Ibrox director Hugh Adam, who had a 30-year association with the club until 2002, has told Sportsmail that the club's directors were aware of the arrangement - one he believes could have started as early as the mid-1990s.



'They weren't included in the contracts. They definitely weren't. That was the whole point of them,' he said. 'If they'd been included in the contracts, they would have had to have paid tax on them.



'I don't think a lot of the other directors knew an awful lot about it. David Murray kept everything to himself.



'The directors just wanted to sit in the directors' box. That's all. When I was on the board, I knew all about them.



'I just didn't know the details of them. They became accepted. 'The revenue were seriously challenging them at that point when I was a director.



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'People never really asked serious questions about them. "It's perfectly legal" was what they thought.



'It wasn't happening in Britain, so had nothing to do with Britain. All the directors heard about them but didn't take them seriously because they didn't appear in the books.'



Adam's revelation suggests a clear breach of the SFA rulebook - and is a potential embarrassment to current SFA president Campbell Ogilvie, who had a 27-year association with Rangers, many of them spent as secretary.



The SFA rule on registration states: 'All payments made to a player relating to his playing activities must be clearly recorded upon the relevant contract and/or agreement.



'No payment for his playing activities may be made to the player through a third party.'



Adam, the man who funded the redevelopment of Ibrox through Rangers pools, believes payments into discretionary trusts may have gone on well before the turn of the millennium.



It's understood the 'big tax case' relates to EBT payments from 2000 until 2009 but, when questioned if he heard of similar payments in the mid- 1990s, Adam confirmed: 'Without having any specialist knowledge, I'm pretty sure.



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'People didn't want to know about them. There was a lot of that (EBTs) going on at the time (I was there).



'You knew it was cheating but some of them not only hoped but believed it was above board. 'It's this thing that when something happens it has to have a beginning and an end, but that wasn't the case with the overseas things.



'It was just something that crept up. It was considered important but not crucial. The fans didn't give a damn one way or another. You could argue that they knew about it but didn't think it was important.



'Maybe they never thought it was as much as it really was. And maybe it wasn't. I don't know if you remember radio stations from ships.



'I don't think they were making a fortune but they weren't costing a lot of money, so no one bothered.



'When I was asked for my opinion on the way the club had been run, I said it was quite obvious how it had got into trouble.'They were doing things they shouldn't have been doing.



'They (EBTs) were always regarded in my time as a bit of a joke. They were getting away with it but nobody really thought they'd get away wi th i t forever. '



It would be an offshore trust - almost like a boat. You could dodge your taxes that way. It wasn't something that you picked up the paper and read about. It was one at a time then grew on a gradual basis.



'The players were very naive. Few of them were the Brain of Britain, of course. If they get the money, they don't give a damn where it's coming from.'







