Craig Whyte vows to sack anyone at Rangers who talks to BBC

CRAIG Whyte has intensified his battle with the BBC by stating that any member of the club who speaks to the broadcaster, even in an off-the-record basis, “will never work for Rangers again”.

Incensed by what he calls an “institutionalised bias” against his club within the walls of Pacific Quay, Whyte re-iterates his intention to sue the broadcaster, adding: “Maybe the BBC are going to be paying the [HMRC] tax bill.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Whyte expresses thunderous views on the BBC and, as he sees it, the motives behind their documentary Rangers: The Inside Story, aired on Thursday evening. Whyte says that not only he is suing the BBC but that he is also considering taking legal action against one of the contributors in the programme.

Robert Burns, head of investigations at the government’s Insolvency Service, suggested that Whyte could have faced a two-year jail sentence for his involvement with a firm called Re-tex Plastic Technology in a period when he was disqualified from being a director. Whyte says he hasn’t actually seen the BBC’s investigation but is au fait with the allegations it makes, Burns’s suggestion of criminality being the most serious.

“On the basis of what I’ve heard the Insolvency Service said last night I’m looking into the possibility of suing them personally. For what he [Burns] said, he deserves to be sued personally. Because it’s a lie.”

The Rangers owner also states that his bitter foe and former chairman at Ibrox, Alastair Johnston, has been e-mailing him in the last ten days looking for £30,000 in expenses from when he was still in the chair at Ibrox. Whyte says the communication was friendly at first, but then last midweek it turned nasty when Johnston threatened to sue if the monies were not paid.

“There was this series of e-mails and I was really surprised,” says Whyte. “So then he puts a deadline of last Friday on it and said if I didn’t pay it he was going to sue. There was an overhanging threat of a law suit if I didn’t pay him.”

During the HMRC tax bill segment of the interview, Whyte concedes that he made an error by being so secretive for so long in relation to what he intends to do in the event of a worst-case scenario.

“With hindsight, I should have probably said more about this when I first came in but on the other hand we were battling to win the league at the time and I didn’t want to put negative issues out there. As soon as the league was over, I should have come out and said ‘Look, there’s a big job to be done here’. I should have got my message out a bit sooner.”

Administration, said Whyte, was very much an option in the case of a mammoth tax bill from HMRC. It is, he stresses, something that he is attempting to avoid but he argues that it might not be the nightmare that some have predicted.

“Other than a regrettable event in our history I don’t think it would be as bad as people think it might be.

“But that’s not what I want. It’s something I’d rather avoid, if at all possible.”

Meanwhile, Rangers manager Ally McCoist would not be drawn on any of the controversies that are swirling around his ears at present. “I’m not going to talk about any television programmes or anything like that – all I am going to say is that I spoke to Craig Whyte on Friday morning, as I always do, and we are both in total agreement that the most important thing is Sunday’s game at Tynecastle.

“We had a chat about the team, the players and the squad – as we always do – and we are both of the opinion, which we both feel is the right one, that at this moment in time the fans deserve to know that we are totally focused on the game at Hearts.”