Rangers malicious prosecution case is resulting in eye-watering compensation payouts and the public must be told exactly what happened – Murdo Fraser MSP

Last week my fellow Scotsman columnist Kenny MacAskill MP again highlighted the scandal involving the Crown Office prosecution of individuals associated with Rangers Football Club.

David Whitehouse, left, and Paul Clark were appointed the joint administrators of Rangers in 2012 (Picture: Robert Perry)

He suggested that the malicious prosecution of the club’s administrators might require the resignation of the Lord Advocate, James Wolffe.

The latest twist in this sorry saga came last week, when David Grier, an executive with the administrators Duff and Phelps, and a negotiator in Craig Whyte’s takeover of the club, doubled his claim against the Lord Advocate over the failed case, now seeking £5 million damages rather than £2 million as previously. Grier is also claiming £9 million from Police Scotland.

This follows reports last week that David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, also of Duff and Phelps, had now been paid some £24 million from the Crown Office, representing £21 million in damages and £3 million in reimbursement of legal costs. This is in addition to a separate compensation sum paid by Police Scotland, which is estimated to be in the region of £20 million.

Unprecedented in Scottish legal history

There are two more individuals whose cases are ongoing – Charles Green and Imran Ahmad – also involved in litigation for eye-watering sums.

The background to this is the purchase by Craig Whyte of Rangers from Sir David Murray in May 2011, for the sum of £1. At least three individuals involved in the case, Green, Whitehouse and Clark, were subject to what the Lord Advocate has now admitted was a “malicious prosecution” and a breach of their human rights.

The public needs to know the full cost of the malicious prosecution of Rangers FC's former administrators, says Murdo Fraser (Picture: Alan Harvey / SNS Group)

The whole case is, frankly, staggering. It is inevitable that in any criminal justice system there are individuals who are prosecuted who are innocent, and end up being acquitted of the crimes of which they are charged.

However, where sufficient evidence exists, prosecutors have a duty to take action against those who they have a legitimate reason to believe have broken the law, and ultimately it is up to the courts to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.

But that is not what happened in this case. These men were entirely innocent of the charges brought against them, and Scotland’s chief prosecutor has admitted in open court that these charges were brought maliciously. This is, as far as I can determine, unprecedented in Scottish legal history.

A malicious prosecution of innocent individuals is something we might expect from a Third World dictatorship with no respect for the rule of law. But this is not North Korea or Zimbabwe. That it could have happened in Scotland in the 21st century is simply outrageous, and raises the most serious questions about the conduct of the Crown Office.

Tens of millions of pounds

None of this would have been uncovered had it not been for the tenacity of Whitehouse, Clark and their colleagues. They took the Crown Office and Police Scotland to court in a civil action, which both public bodies conceded.

They were fortunate in having the private means to pursue an extremely expensive court action against taxpayer-funded public bodies to achieve this result; other individuals without the necessary resources simply would not have had that opportunity.

Here we have a group of innocent men who faced prison, and financial ruin, for offences of which they were entirely innocent. Moreover, the costs to the public purse for this fiasco have already run into the tens of millions of pounds, and the total cost is now unlikely to be less than £50 million, and could well be much more than that.

When we see so much pressure on the public finances generally, it is simply unbelievable that such vast sums of public money could be squandered in this fashion.

With businesses and individuals currently desperate for support because of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and unable to receive pay-outs from the Scottish government, they will rightly be asking why vital funds have been thrown away in this manner, when they could be put to so much better use.

There will also be many in the police service, looking at crumbling buildings and failing equipment, asking who is responsible for these sums being lost.

Corruption or incompetence?

Fundamentally, that is the question we need to get answers to. I believe that the current Lord Advocate is a decent and honourable man.

The prosecution of these individuals, all of whom were connected with Rangers Football Club, predates his appointment as Lord Advocate.

It was his predecessor in office, Frank Mulholland, now a High Court judge, who was Scotland’s chief prosecutor at the time. But it is James Wolffe as the current holder of the office of Lord Advocate who has the responsibility to account to Parliament, and the Scottish people, for what has gone wrong.

Last week I lodged a series of written questions in the Scottish Parliament asking what sums had now been paid out in connection with this affair, and seeking other information. It is vital that there is full public transparency over these matters, and I will be doing all I can to uncover every last detail of the truth.

It may well be that there was criminal behaviour on the part of individuals in the Crown Office which needs to be investigated.

In that case, the old question from the Roman poet Juvenal comes to mind: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who will guard the guards themselves? If the prosecution service in Scotland is found to be corrupt, who will then have the task of prosecuting them?

Whether the behaviour of the Crown Office was simply incompetence, or went as far as corruption, is something that we need to know in time. Either way, this is an appalling episode in Scottish legal history, and its repercussions are likely to be with us for many years to come.

Murdo Fraser is a Conservative MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.