SFA Decision Examined

You would be forgiven for thinking the SFA were spot on in their recent decision to punish Rangers if you picked up a newspaper over the weekend. Damning, irrefutable evidence that John Greig, John McLelland and Dave King knew what Craig Whyte was up to. Why didn’t they stop him? Why didn’t they speak up? Of course, as is often the case with these things, the media are hoping nobody will actually sift through the 60 odd pages of the full reasoning issued by the SFA. They just picked a few lines placed in there that the SFA knew they would use and declared it an open and shut case. Well  known journalists are now “incredulous” as to why Rangers would even bother appealing. Well, I’m a bit less willing to accept what I read in the papers so I did bother to read through the 60 pages. Let’s have a look at what is in there shall we? This is a link to the full decision if you are of a mind to trawl through it as I have done. http://www.scribd.com/doc/93212354/SFA-Rangers-Note-of-Reasons

The document is split into 3 main parts. The evidence considered, the sanctions imposed and then a conclusion from the legal brain behind the panel’s decision. You would be forgiven for thinking that one panel heard the evidence and then another imposed the sanctions such is the discrepancy between the evidence and the reasoning behind the sanctions.

The document is long and so I am going to ignore several parts. None of these are relevant to the major area of contention, which is the transfer embargo placed on Rangers and is covered by one charge alone, Charge 4, that of “bringing the game into disrepute”. The general nature of this charge (it can cover virtually any ‘naughty’ behaviour on or off the picth) gives you some idea of how unprepared the SFA are to deal with breaches of corporate governance. I’ve ignored the charges against Whyte – you won’t hear any argument from me over his guilt. I’ve also ignored the charges which have imposed fines on the club. Fining a club with no money is idiotic but the reasoning behind the fines is fairly sound and in fairness the fines are payable within a year, during which time the club should be back on its feet. Obviously the SFA could have declined to levy the highest possible fines in all cases but, as we’ll see, this exercise is more about the SFA being seen to do something rather than actually solving the problems created by Whyte.

Ok so let’s look at the evidence relating to Charge 4 which brought the sanction of the transfer embargo. The main thrust of this charge is the non payment of taxes (PAYE and VAT) on behalf of Rangers. The SFA correctly cite case law on corporate responsibility which is the principle that you cannot separate the actions of a director from that of the company. In other words if Whyte did something wrong then Rangers are responsible. There is no question that Craig Whyte withheld taxes – nobody is arguing that this was all a big mistake. He did it and he did it intentionally. If you apply the perfectly admissible legal standard of corporate responsibility then Rangers are guilty. The issue comes with the mitigating factors which the SFA seem to have ignored.

Firstly there is the question of why nobody stopped Whyte? Rangers are to blame because the other directors should have acted. The SFA had this to say, part of which has been quoted in most papers,

Fair enough you might say. However, let’s look back at some of the statements which were made in evidence and readily accepted as being accurate by the SFA.

Ok so wait. They “were aware or should have been aware”, but here we are saying that Whyte deliberately excluded them, not only from the decision making process but also from having any financial information on the club. There is no evidence anywhere in the document that any of these directors knew what Whyte was doing. None. The media are saying they “knew” that they “walked away”, all very emotive phrases and plays on words to dig at the Rangers support. The simple fact is though that the SFA have failed to produce a shred of evidence to prove this. In fact the evidence shows quite the opposite.

There is no evidence that they “were aware”, so what about the point that they “ought to have been aware”? This is accurate. As directors they have a duty to ensure they are informed about the company. Did they do nothing then? Well no. On the 17th October, after having it made clear they would receive no financial information, both Greig and McLelland resigned. In a public  statement it was made clear that “both were of the opinion that since the change of ownership they have been excluded from participating in corporate governance at the club”. So, they made a public statement that Craig Whyte was stopping the other directors of the club from doing their duty.

The person who probably knew most about what Craig Whyte was doing was Ken Olverman. He was financial controller at Rangers during this period and despite being uncomfortable with Whyte’s  actions he continued to carry out his job according to Whyte’s instructions. This may be a matter for his professional association. What it isn’t, is a stick with which to beat Rangers. Olverman is an employee, not a director. He is not held to the same standard as a director which is something the media and the SFA seem to be  failing to grasp.

So the directors didn’t know. They clearly suspected something was wrong and, when they couldn’t get answers, they very publicly resigned and stated that they were being excluded. So at this point the SFA acted, right? Well, no. The SFA contacted Whyte after the Mark Daly, BBC documentary which aired in October 2011. Whyte, through his lawyers, essentially told them to piss off. So that’s what they did. They waited until Rangers were in administration, in February 2012, a full 5 months later, before acting on any of the information in the public domain about Whyte. They had already ignored Alastair Johnston and the Independent Board’s statement rubbishing Whyte prior to the conclusion of the takeover. They ignored the concerns of Greig and McLelland as stated in their public resignations in October.

The tribunal took the decision to impose a transfer ban on Rangers for one year solely for Charge 4.  This is within their remit but not their guidelines. In essence, they made up the sanction.

Ok now I’m really confused. The directors were “misled and deceived” but “must have known”. There is that phrase, “must have known”. Also they apparently “did nothing to bring it to the attention of the public”. You mean apart  from resigning and telling every media outlet who covered it that is was down to being excluded from corporate governance? You really could not make this up. We know the SFA were aware of issues with Whyte because they tried to get information from him in October.

We then get various sound bites from the SFA. Designed to ensure they are quoted by the media the following day.

This is a cracker. Obviously if you mention match fixing then it’s going to be in the media. Never mind that there is no connection to this case. This is gold for the media and I’ve not seen a single outlet that hasn’t mentioned it. Much of this 60 page document was clearly written with the media in mind. Which perhaps explains why it took them 2 weeks to publish an explanation of their decision…

The summary of the decision is unremarkable except for the number of times the witnesses are commended for the accuracy and openness of their testimony. An interesting thing to do when you have largely disregarded that testimony when arriving at a sanction . No less than 11 paragraphs of this summary start with the words “it is remarkable”. Well I have a few things I’d like to remark on in addition!

It is remarkable that the SFA had, and still have, no procedures in place to ensure that their member clubs are not the victim of unscrupulous businessmen.

It is remarkable that despite being warned about Whyte by Alastair Johnston, Martin Bain, Paul Murray, John McLelland and John Greig, the SFA took no action except to ask Craig Whyte for some documentation which he refused to provide. They didn’t follow it up until it was too late and the club was in administration.

It is remarkable that the SFA feel they can competently sit in judgement on such a case, despite making it clear in the document that they had never envisaged such a case coming before what is essentially a commitee which decides on red card appeals and naughty managers.

It is remarkable that the SFA are confident enough to prejudge possible criminal action against Craig Whyte who is the subject of an investigation by the City of London police.

It is remarkable that the SFA may, in their actions, end up punishing the victim of a fraud for the actions of the person who has allegedly defrauded them.

It is remarkable that nobody has questioned the corporate governance of the SFA and their negligence in having no checks in place to ensure that a member club were not subject to the type of pillaging carried out by Craig Whyte.

It is remarkable that the club is on the verge of being bought again and the SFA have still not managed to bring in rules to ensure that any person taking over a club is a “fit and proper” person. They have now had 8 months since they were first made aware of problems with Whyte and have done nothing. I’m not suggesting Mr Green will do a  Mr Whyte but, if he chose to, then the SFA would let him.

The SFA were clearly not equipped to deal with this case. They tried anyway and have made a mess of it. They could have admitted they had  no proper checks and then put them in place. Nobody in the media is asking questions about this because Rangers are a rudderless, easy target. They’ve lapped up the sound bites in the SFA statement and as one are criticising Rangers for even bothering to appeal. Nobody, myself and Rangers fans included, is suggesting Rangers should not be punished. They’ve been fined heavily and the club will be a long time undoing the damage done by Whyte.

The SFA system is akin to having a rule of law and courts to punish offenders but no police force to deter them from carrying out the crime or investigate if any wrongdoing has occurred. They are taking no responsibility for their failure to carry out any proper checks. They have a duty of care to their members that they are failing to provide. Let’s be clear on this, nobody at Rangers could have stopped Craig Whyte from doing what he did but the SFA could have if they had proper checks in place for directors or if they had followed up their October questioning properly. Only an independent body could have stopped Whyte because his majority shareholding gave him complete control within Ibrox. There were plenty warnings given, in public, by the old board and those who remained for a period of months after the takeover and the SFA ignored them all.

I can accept that the SFA were caught cold. I can accept they never saw this coming. What I can’t accept is them taking no responsibility and then imposing punitive sanctions on the club when they have quite clearly accepted in their own judgement that nobody within the club could have stopped Whyte. They say the directors didn’t inform the public when we know they did. They say they “must have known” when the evidence shows they didn’t. This document is as much about hiding their own failings as it is about exposing what Whyte did.

The appeal will be heard on Wednesday. The SFA have a chance to inject some common sense into their handling of this Whyte saga. While they are at it they might want to spend some time getting Vincent  Lunny to do his job and draft some regulations to ensure nobody like Whyte gets near a Scottish football club again.

I’ll leave you with Alastair Johnston’s thoughts on the SFA:

“”The SFA sat back so far they might as well have not existed. Why didn’t the SFA ask why board members were sacked or felt forced to resign? We spoke publicly and loudly about our concerns.”

SFA Transparency

Well it’s been an interesting week…I’m going to try to avoid delving too deep into the fallout of the SFA decision on Rangers because much of this has already been covered in an excellent piece by Andy McKellar  here http://amckel.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/fairness-transparency-and.html . However, I would like to make a few points about the SFA process itself  in attempt to explain why it is seen as so deeply flawed.

When Stewart Regan took over the SFA he made a great deal of a new era of “transparency”. It was his buzz word. He bemoaned the lack of it previously and talked of shadowy corridors of power and how the SFA decision making process had to be more open and accountable. He then introduced a disciplinary system in which an anonymous panel was given free reign to impose any penalty it saw fit on the people and clubs that it judged…

The anonymity is something I’ll return to, but along with this he also introduced another extraordinary element to the process. Total randomness. The panel of three is picked from a pool of a hundred volunteers and so there is no consistency in decision making. This is exacerbated by the fact that all the panel have to frame their decisions with, is a set of guidelines which they can chose, and have chosen, to completely ignore on occasion.

Ok, so let’s look at anonymity. I’d like to say I can totally understand why the people making these decision might want to remain anonymous. There is no question that the more controversial decisions made by SFA employees have attracted unwanted attention. The fallout has mainly been suffered by referees who don’t have the option of remaining anonymous. Willie Collum and others have been subjected to death threats after making decisions which some ‘fans’ did not agree with.

The flexibility of the system does not lend itself to this anonymity however. The real issue that the SFA need to address is the power these anonymous panel members have. If they were applying a clear set of rules and sanctions then I believe their anonymity would be more acceptable to fans and clubs. It would not be difficult for the SFA to introduce proper, set penalties for disciplinary matters. For players and managers there could be set bans for certain behaviour. They are either guilty or not and receive set penalties. You cannot have anonymity and flexibility. It is one thing for a faceless panel to impose a known penalty because they have little room to insert their own bias or personality into that process. It is quite another to allow anonymity coupled with the ability to make the rules up as you go along.

We’ve seen some fairly bizarre panel decisions in the past couple of weeks. Firstly, Neil Lennon was given what amounted to a half-match ban for his conduct at Ibrox, served by being sent to the stand during the game. Amongst the crowing, it was overlooked that he was found guilty on all counts. There were guideline punishments available which the panel in that case choose to ignore and they made up their own punishment. There was little fallout since the punishment was non existent. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened had they decided to ban him for 10 matches.

Then came Rangers. I firmly believe that if the panel had stuck to the suggested guideline punishments then there would have been much less issue. Applying maximum fines to a club in administration may be idiotic but it is understandable idiocy because it’s written in the guidelines. What is not comprehensible to fans or the club is that a faceless panel can discard the guidelines and formulate their own punitive sanction of a transfer embargo and not expect people to question who they are. They are creating their own disciplinary sanctions. It is not their fault, as such, because the SFA process allows for such creative thinking – the issue lies with a system which thinks that a club would accept such creative thinking, without question, in such a serious matter.

We are told by the SFA in defence of their poorly formulated, non-transparent system that the clubs agreed to it. Well that may be the case but it is one thing to agree to a system which might allow your star player to be banned for an extra game but quite another to foresee a situation where that system leads to your club being put out of business. It is unthinkable that three anonymous people can make a decision, off their own back, totally outside the guidelines they are given, which contributes to an SFA member club going out of business.

There is also another issue here. It has been alleged by people close to Celtic that Neil Lennon’s punishment was arranged out-with the tribunal hearing by Vincent Lunny and the Celtic lawyer. These allegations have never been followed up by any journalist to my knowledge which is in itself incredible, especially since the person making the allegations broke the result of the hearing before the media did. It does however raise questions of just how creative these panels are being? Are they formulating these new sanctions on their own or are they being given a helping hand by Mr Lunny whose role in such hearings is quite unclear. Who else is present in the room when these decisions are being made? What influence is being exerted?

The random composition of the panel and the inconsistency it breeds would also be assisted by clear rules and sanctions. It would not matter as much that the panel is never the same because the consistency would come from the framework of the sanctions rather than the panel itself. It’s not rocket science but Stewart Regan does not appear to be blessed with either competence or intellect. Perhaps he makes up for this with his charm and wit but having had the misfortune to see him interviewed  I suspect not.

Ally McCoist was absolutely correct to challenge the decision and entirely correct in wanting to know both how the decision was reached and who the masterminds behind these sanctions were. One of the panel members today stated he would like to have been able to explain the decision but was gagged by the SFA. Transparency? It’s been two days since the decision was made and there is still no explanation as to the thought process. Why is it taking so long? Are we to believe it takes that long to type out some minutes? Presumably the members of the panel were clear on their reasons for making the decisions they did, so why not issue the reasons with the judgement?

The SFA need to overhaul this system again. If they want anonymity they need to introduce set sanctions. If they want flexibility then they need to find panel members who are happy to stand by those decisions in public. They also need to explain better how they are reaching decisions and publish these immediately, not days after.

Transparency and accountability, Stewart? I think not.

The Anatomy of a Rangers Rumour

Alex Thomson is a respected Channel 4 journalist and has no previous with issues involving Scottish football, so when he announced his intention to investigate the goings on at Rangers, and in Scottish football in general, it was an intriguing proposition. Maybe Alex would be the first to get to the bottom of things? Perhaps he would be able to either confirm or quash the many rumours doing the rounds and get some straight answers from the main players in this story? Well, no. It seems that despite covering wars and political intrigue for 20 years, Alex was not quite prepared for the vitriol and rumour-mongering of a small collection of people whose only purpose in life is to damage a football club as much as they can. One day these people will become the story, so lets have a look at them and their methods – it’s not as if they try to hide what they are doing.

Let’s introduce the members of this Mafia; Phil McThreeNames, Paul CQN, Tony the Hat and Mr Tax Case. They all share a nominal interest in Celtic Football Club but much more than that they share a pathological hatred of anything British, a love for Irish Republicanism and the IRA and a paranoia that the Irish are a persecuted people in Britain. These views are mainly the result of years of inferiority complex. One is a failed social worker with genuine mental problems, another a failed journalist and both have been shunned by what they like to call the “mainstream media” or MSM for short. There should be no doubting their sincerity – they really feel persecuted and they really hate Rangers, which for them is the embodiment of everything British and has been responsible for ensuring their club of choice has always been second best.

Now I know what people are thinking – this is madness. Yes, indeed it is, but that doesn’t mean these people don’t exist. So how exactly do this band of reprobates get themselves taken seriously? Well it’s a measure of them that they realised that one of them would need to be a journalist of sorts, if only to give them some initial credibility and the ability to ask people for interviews and press passes without being laughed off. Paul CQN has already tried the journalist route but it hasn’t really worked out for him. Mr Hat and Mr Tax Case don’t want anyone to know who they are so it can’t be them. This leaves the failed social worker, so he applies for an NUJ card. A clever move since it means he can pretend to be a journalist without actually needing a job.

With his NUJ card in hand, Mr McThreenames starts a blog and writes every week about Rangers. How evil they are, how nasty their fans are, how they made his daughter cry. He writes the occasional blog on other topics. Most of these are about Irish Republicanism and how some Celtic fans have a right to sing in praise of terrorists because of how persecuted they are in Britain. Irish people don’t actually like Phil but some of the Plastic Irish in Glasgow do, and that has always been his target audience anyway. Meanwhile, Paul CQN continues to expand his ‘magazine’ for the Celtic minded. This magazine writes almost exclusively about Rangers. How evil they are, how they might get away with years of ‘cheating’, how they made Phil’s daughter cry…. Mr Tax Case and Mr Hat are more confined to Twitter although Mr Tax Case does also have a blog where he writes incessantly about Rangers. This blog uses information in the public domain to paint as bleak a picture as it can of Rangers. It has more incorrect predictions of Armageddon than Nostradamus but gets just enough right to stay within the realms of plausibility. This will be very important to the group since McThreenames in particular is a loose cannon.

Still, no matter how much they write, they are not really being taken seriously. The Scottish media have been subjected to these goons for years and so they tend to ignore them. Only the most desperate will give them the time of day, others preferring to get their information from more reliable and less bitter sources. But then something magical happens, Rangers go into administration and, despite getting so much wrong, they can claim victory. Suddenly the story is UK and worldwide and so Phil, Paul and the others have a new set of real journalists to pester. Journalists who, crucially, have no idea of the background of these people.

What follows is something Goebbels would have been proud of. Firstly you lobby journalists on Twitter. Rule number one of this is that hyperbole is your friend. If you don’t exaggerate and make your allegations sound sensational then they might not be interested. It doesn’t matter that you can’t back up what you are saying – that’s their job.

Note how Tony the Hat makes allegations of illegality by using the term “tax evasion” and “scam”. If a journalist did this he would be in court but Tony can get away with it because he’s just an internet loony. Sadly for our intrepid quartet, Mr Marcotti sees through the hyperbole and doesn’t bite. Never mind – plenty more fish in the sea. The snapshots in this blog are the tip of the iceberg. These guys are literally spending days a week lobbying against Rangers. Maybe they should try the Scottish journalists again, just one last time….?

You’ll note the hyperbole again from Tony and also the use of the word “fraud”.  Also, the above from Paul CQN is particularly revealing. These guys spent about 2 years constantly talking about the tax case but, as soon as there were some indications that Rangers might actually win, they change tack immediately to improper registration of players and pressure on the SFA. They still hope the tax case outcome will be negative but they also realise that Rangers are likely to emerge from it somehow so they need a back up. We are the enemy and they can’t countenance the fact that we might just survive this.

Often random messages from their small army of devotees can trigger an idea in the minds of our deranged vigilantes.

Let’s try UEFA? Phil has Nyon on speed dial having previously lobbied against Rangers over anything he can think of (although the likelihood is that he knows their hold music off by heart).  He approaches UEFA and Rangers’ opponents in previous European competition and so Paul CQN does a piece on how UEFA are to become involved. Paul’s article is drivel of course but again we learn something of the mindset. It doesn’t matter if you get something totally wrong, just brass-neck it. Paul wrote the following about UEFA:

He then stated that a ‘proper’ journalist had confirmed his story:

However, this is what Alex Thomson actually confirmed:

Oh well…. On the plus side for our Fantastic Four, Alex Thomson is now involved. He receives a barrage of messages and offers of help . Flattery it seems works best.

Well it turned out that Alex’s attempt wasn’t quite as explosive as our quartet may have hoped. It involved an interview in which a sick and bewildered old man wittered on about perceived wrong-doing without a shred of proof. Hugh Adam wasn’t even on the board at the time covered by his allegations. In fact all his piece did was regurgitate stories from two weeks previous in the Scottish media. You could almost sense that Alex realised half way through the interview that this wasn’t quite what he had signed up for. I don’t think we should blame him – from the outside looking in he probably felt that, with all these allegations flying around, there must be something to them. Indeed that might even prove to be the case, but it’s turning out that proving the allegations is a bit more tricky than making them. It seems that Alex’s new found status with Celtic’s internet maniacs is already on the wane. I hope they don’t turn on him the way they have with other people who failed to live up to their paranoid expectations.

I did however learn something from Alex Thomson’s programme. It seems perfectly admissible to make any statement you like if you precede it with the words “many people say”. In Alex’s case, the things that “many people say” seem to have come straight from one or other of our Fantastic Four.

So let’s give that a go. “Many people say” that Phil McThreenames was responsible, through neglect, for the death of a man in his care in Glasgow leading to his move to Ireland and change of name (twice). “Many people say” that Paul Brennan is the unofficial mouthpiece of the CEO of Celtic, Peter Lawwell and that his articles represent the view of the board of that football club. “Many people say” that Mr Tax Case got his information about Rangers from an HMRC employee whose father also works for HMRC in a senior position. This information would have been illegal for him to disclose and may well have been covered up to avoid embarrassment and possibly civil or criminal action being taken. “Many people say” that Celtic made side payments to Juninho and that Robbie Keane and Craig Bellamy were paid additional wages by a rich benefactor of Celtic. “Many people say” that Celtic duped the tax man for years by not declaring the true attendance figures for their matches at Parkhead. Of course I can’t prove any of this but “many people say” that it’s true. Rangers fans are not so obsessed with our rivals that we feel the need to devote our entire lives to investigating these matters, although if these guys continue their attempt to destroy our club that might have to change.

When the club is back on its feet and new owners are in place they are going to have to deal with these guys. There are not many certainties about how this Rangers’ story will pan out but there are a couple. Whatever punishment Rangers do or don’t receive it won’t be enough for this internet Mafia. If we are found not guilty of anything then they will cry “cover up” and will spread more paranoia to another generation. They will also never stop of their own accord. There are many good people out there who support Celtic and would be amazed at the hatred emanating from these guys but the more they stir it up and the more lies they tell the more converts they will amass. Nobody likes to be second best.