Former Rangers owner Craig Whyte has claimed that a senior HMRC representative admitted to him they “should have done a deal” with Rangers to avoid administration.
Whyte has lifted the lid on the “disaster” of administration and talks with the taxman after purchasing the club for just £1 back in 2012 – before a series of off-the-park financial issues blighted the club the following year. Whyte insists that he was told HMRC would never win the case against Rangers before he purchased the club before the scale of the debts at Ibrox became clear.
He insists that his talks with HMRC were “like banging his head against a wall” – before revealing that behind the scenes confession had been made. Speaking to Craig Campbell’s SEO podcast about his time at Rangers, Whyte said: “In that case there was a dispute between HMRC and Rangers. Rangers were adamant they didn’t owe the money, although subsequently the tribunals have come to the conclusion that they did owe the larger amount and that became pretty clear soon after I bought the club despite various representations from the previous owners saying, ‘No there’s no way they’re gonna win the case’.
“It became clear within a few weeks of buying the club that this debt of at least £50million was going to come due at some point. The problem with a high-profile business which is in the press every day, there are stories every day.
“Any other company that has this potential liability that can put them out of business, they can sweep it under the carpet for a bit until the clock chimes as it were. A high-profile business you’ve got all this social media chat, news media saying there’s a devastating debt, so it makes it very difficult for the business to continue.
“I had conversations with HMRC saying ‘We’ve got to find a solution to this and quickly or else the club can’t continue’. But trying to deal with a government department is like banging your head against a brick wall, they don’t wanna know, they’ve got their procedures and aren’t interested in having a rational conversation like two people in business would have.
“They’ve got their bureaucratic procedures to go through. It became apparent there was no option but for Rangers to go through an insolvency process which would get rid of the debt, as it were. What should’ve happened is they should’ve gone through that process very quickly, the first two months, instead of leaving it until several months later.”
He added: “The end outcome assuming that the tax authorities refused to do a deal, which they did, although they did say after the disaster of the insolvency process at Rangers, the main guy at HMRC did say we should have done a deal, which I told him many times. That he should’ve done a deal, but they didn’t want to know. I told them administration is gonna be a disaster and should be avoided in doing it in this uncontrolled way, but they don’t want to listen.”