The former Rangers Football Club has been fined £250,000 for making undisclosed payments to players, but will not be stripped of any titles.
An independent commission appointed by the Scottish Premier League imposed the penalty, finding “Oldco” bosses guilty of failing to make proper disclosure of “side-letter arrangements” between 2000 and 2011.
The club avoided the most severe sanction of losing up to five SPL titles won during the period investigated, after the commission ruled that Rangers “did not gain any unfair competitive advantage”.
The three-man commission chaired by Lord Nimmo Smith was unanimous in its decision.
The panel found that Rangers, under Sir David Murray’s stewardship, entered side-letter arrangements with a large number of players. The club made payments to an offshore employee benefit trust (EBT) and paid players in the form of “loans”.
It found that those arrangements, required to be disclosed under the rules of the SPL and the Scottish Football Association, were not disclosed to the football authorities.
The commission statement read: “Although the payments in this case were not themselves irregular and were not in breach of SPL or SFA Rules, the scale and extent of the proven contraventions of the disclosure rules require a substantial penalty to be imposed.
“Rangers FC did not gain any unfair competitive advantage from the contraventions of the SPL rules in failing to make proper disclosure of the side-letter arrangements, nor did the non-disclosure have the effect that any of the registered players were ineligible to play, and for this and other reasons no sporting sanction or penalty should be imposed upon Rangers FC.”
The commision confirmed their earlier decision that Rangers’s current owners cannot be held responsible for any breach of rules by the “Oldco”.
The statement said: “In all the circumstances the commission has imposed a fine of £250,000 on Oldco.”
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