Rangers administration: Paul Murray’s consortium of hope

Paul Murray, the former Rangers director and now head of a prospective consortium interested in buying the club, has said that he will know by the end of this week the names of the “like-minded businessmen” who are going to be involved in a possible takeover bid and how much money his collective is likely to have.

Ibrox director Dave King, he said, may be involved but Murray was confident that King’s massive tax problems in South Africa will not impact on Rangers in any way.

King is facing 322 charges of money-laundering, racketeering, fraud and tax evasion and has, for 14 years, been pursued by the South African Revenue Services for unpaid tax of 2.7 billion rand, about £230m. King denies the charges against him, but late last year had his Stellenbosch wine estate liquidated by a government administrator. King is considered the number one target in an aggressive clampdown by the revenue services in South Africa.

“Dave and I are mentioned as if we are joined at the hip and I respect him entirely,” said Murray, yesterday. “He’s a former colleague of mine and a friend. But Dave has got his own interests and is able to decide whether he wants to be involved or not. I’d like him to be involved, but the vision here is to make this a broadly-based offering. I don’t think it’s sustainable to have one or two or even four or five people involved, we have to spread the load. That’s the most sustainable model and Dave will look at that in his own right.

“I don’t want to comment on Dave’s personal tax affairs but I’m sure that he will factor that into his decision of whether he wants to invest. I don’t think Dave will do anything to embarrass Rangers. I don’t have details of his tax affairs and I’ve never asked him. But knowing him well, if he felt that this was either going to be embarrassing for the club, after everything that’s happened, or he felt this would be a distraction I think he would step aside. But if he felt he could manage the situation, he might look at it differently. I would trust Dave to come to the right decision.”

Murray has been trying to strike a balance this past week. He wants to engage with fans, and has done. He wants to present a vision that they can believe in and invest in but is wary of heightening expectations too much. “What I don’t want to do is set expectations. I’m trying to be realistic. It’s a massive problem we have. I’m positive, but I don’t want to set unrealistic deadlines.

“I’ve never portrayed myself as a multi-millionaire. What I’m saying here is that I will obviously invest, I will put my time into it, I know the club inside out in terms of its finances, but I’m trying to bring a group of people together to come forward with a common vision. It’s quite difficult to pull together but it’s entirely possible. I’m actually staggered by the interest.”

How many potential big-ticket investors and how much money? It’s not something he can nail down for definite right now.

“I’m not in a position to say how much money we have, because it’s unclear. I’m not evading the question but I want to make sure that when I come out with this I have it firmed up. You were the first to say I had a pie in the sky plan the last time and I disagree with you on that. But I want to make sure this is done properly. I think it was badly presented the last time in terms of the media coverage of it. It needs to be properly formulated before I go on the record with the details.”

A key detail is what he intends to do with the HMRC howitzer, should it arrive to the tune of £49m or anything like that sum. “I hope we can deal with the EBT tax case through the administration process. Do it all at the same time with other issues that have to be dealt with. I sat on the board for four years and we halved the debt, but that was under extreme pressure from the bank and we were lucky to have Walter Smith winning leagues, so we had Champions League money that enabled us to pay down the debt. As a consequence, though, not just the playing squad but the entire infrastructure of the club needs to be reinvested in. There’s been years of under-investment. There’s a big capital requirement going forward. Anybody buying the club has to factor that in.”

What he’s doing is checking the commitments of those who have come forward, applying some scrutiny to the various Blue Knights who have appeared since the club imploded. “By the end of next week I will have a clear view of not just the members of the consortium but how much money we think we can raise. I’m not saying it will all be legally done [completed], but I will have a pretty clear view of the overall context of it. The people I’m talking to have been there a long time, people who were looking at the club this time last year, so the interest has always been there. It’s not like people are starting from absolute scratch, there is a level of past relationship. The people who are expressing interest at the moment are not doing it for profit-making reasons, they’re doing it to try and rescue the club and put it on a solid foundation.”

He hasn’t spoken to Brian Kennedy, who has expressed a tentative interest in buying the club, but he would welcome a chat. “I’m only doing this so that Rangers can get into the right hands. If there’s a better consortium somewhere, I will gladly step aside or even join it. That’s possibly what might happen over time; the various interested parties might come together. I don’t see any reason why people should be competing given the scale of the problems the club has got. I would think that people with the same interests should come together and work together. We just need to take some responsibility and go and do it.”

Easier said than done, but the coming week is a pivotal one for Murray and his team.