Leggat - WHYTE'S MEN FACE JAIL THREAT

[ian1964 10,761]

HERE is a pretty confident prediction. Somebody, indeed maybe more than one person, will go to jail when the full extent of the apparent fraud perpetrated on Rangers is proved.

 

 

Craig Whyte is of course in the frame. Though he is more likely to be holed up somewhere with Lord Lucan as a near neighbour. At best!

 

 

Unless he is made an offer he canâ??t refuse. That might be no better than the choice of the head of a white or black horse as a bed companion, perhaps.

 

 

Others may say such things, but I could not possibly comment.

 

 

What I am happy to comment on is the likelihood of someone doing some serious porridge and my bet as the man being lined up to take the fall is the lawyer Whyte brought in as Rangers company secretary, Gary Withey. Unless he has already flown the coop and settled down next door to Whyte and Lord Lucan.

 

 

Withey is causing the previously prestigious London based international law firm, Collyer Bristow, acute embarrassment. Withey, who is a lawyer, is actually a partner in Collyer Bristow whose plush offices are in the shadow of St Paulâ??s in the square mile.

 

 

So far Withey has failed to respond to pleas from Rangers administrators, Duff and Phelps for help in finding the staggering sum of £4.5m which they have identified as having gone missing.

 

 

My information is that the men at the top of Collyer Bristow are making moves to give Withey the boot.

 

 

If he is ever found then he will no doubt face a long, tough and searching session in a police interrogation room, possibly as a prelude to an appearance in the dock at the High Court, followed, perchance, by a stiff stretch in the Bar-L.

 

 

For the moment, and for as long as the hunt for Withey goes on, he remains innocent. Until proven to be guilty.

 

 

Another of the dodgy dealers ace conman Craig Whyte filled the Ibrox boardroom with was Phil Betts.

 

 

And I can now reveal the full extent to which he ripped off Rangers�with a little help from conman Craig Whyte. Betts, who is 49, trousered just a few quid short of £200,000 for the period from when he joined the Rangers board in May until he left last month.

 

 

For doing just what?

 

 

Betts, by his own admission, is not a tax expert. So what skill did he take to Whyteâ??s boardroom table? Apart from the fact that he started a firm called Primary Asset Finance in 2005 and it was sponsored by another finance company called, Close Brothers. One of the board members of Close Brothers is Ray Greenshields who is also chairman of Octopus VCT3, which owns Ticketus.

 

 

And Ticketus, as we all now know, handed over the £24.4m to Whyte which allowed him to buy Rangers. Itâ??s amazing the way all the pieces of this dodgy and ugly jigsaw fit together.

 

 

Betts has said that he will hand back that £200,000 if it can be proved it was paid out of the Rangers FC plc account. But if it came from the Rangers FC Group Ltd account, then he will keep his greedy paws on it.

 

 

So which account do you thing conman Whyte paid Betts from? Answers on the back of a stamp please.

 

 

Follow the money, as they say in the movies.

 

 

Though this time, when you run up against Gary Withey, it is hard to follow the money. Maybe the phrase should be, try to catch up with the disappeared dough. All £4.5m of it.

 

 

Since Whyte and his hustlers moved into Ibrox , Rangers money has disappeared faster than a pay poke in Blackpool on Fair Friday.

 

 

Just about the only folk we know for sure have been paid and the only place we know for certain where some of the money is, is in the vaults of Lloyds Bank. That is the £18m which Whyte was forced to pay Lloyds, cash he raised against the season tickets of a company he did not own.

 

 

Funny, that!

 

 

We will soon be returning to the role Lloyds Bank has played in the purchase of Rangers by Whyte, which led to the current crisis. And one name which will be placed under the spotlight is former Ibrox director, Donald Muir.

 

 

For the moment though it is enough to know that Phil Betts has waltzed away from Rangers with £200,000 in his hip pocket, for doing we know not what. While Gary Withey appears about as easy to find as Shergar.

 

 

Not to mention the whereabouts of conman Craig Whyte. His "people" told one well known journalist they haven't been able to get hold of him since Tuesday.

 

 

Honestly!

 

 

Now there's a word not associated with conman Whyte and his gang of hustlers.

��.

AND��..

 

 

WHATâ??S the name of the man at STV ultimately responsible for inviting know nothings Odious Creep and wee Billy Leckie onto Scotland Tonight to discuss the Rangers story?

 

 

BOB WOODWARD!

 

 

Honestly, it is. This one, unlike the Bob Woodward who with Carl Bernstein cracked the Watergate story and brought down Richard Nixon, is no Pulitzer Prize winner.

 

 

I have said â?? and will say it again and again â?? Creep does not work for a newspaper and is not involved in this story. He is not talking to Paul Murray or any of his consortium colleagues. He is not talking to David Murray. And he is not talking to Craig Whyte. Though Creep and conman Whyte have the same lack of precision.

 

 

Wee Billy Leckie is another who is out in the cold on this monumental story.

 

 

So why are so many of those who work for Bob Woodward palming STV viewers off with uniformed pap?

 

 

Why are they making mugs out of the viewers? Is there a valid reason? Is money involved? Or some sort of feeble friendship? Nepotism?

 

 

I think we should be told. STV chief executive, Bob Woodward, the big boss, is the man who should be looking for the answers.

 

 

And if he needs any help probing STVGATE, I know a man who can give him Dustin Hoffman's number.

 

 

 

 

FINALLY....

 

 

YOU read it hear first. David Murray quizzed by Rangers administrators!

 

 

LeggoLand was on the ball on Friday when, by mid afternoon, I revealed that the administrators were to grill David Murray.

 

 

By Saturday morning the news was splashed all over the front page of the Daily Record.

 

 

The Record has led the way on this story, with the Daily Mail not far behind and the Daily Telegraph also on the ball.

 

 

As for the Sun and wee Billy Leckie?

 

 

There was though, I am told, a nod in the direction of the story when the Sun held their own wee awards ceremony at the luvvies West End watering hole, Oran Mor last Saturday.

 

 

Let's just hope the new Sun on Sunday performs better on this, the most important football story in Scotland for the last half century.

 

 

And let's also hope that they don't let loose wee Billy with another of those strange rambling columns.

 

 

For the good news for me is that the launch of the Sun of Sunday means the weekend's best columnist, Davie Provan, is back.

 

 

Go get 'em, Davie!

[forlanssister 3,114]

Leggat is a master at raising false hope, promises much but delivers little.