Rangers crisis: SFA to investigate former director’s contract claims

Hugh Adam, whose three decade long association with the Glasgow side ended in 2002, said today that payments to players were kept hidden from contracts so as to avoid tax.

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Mr Adam said the practice could have been going on as far back as the early 1990s, and said that his fellow directors may not have known about it.

He said: “They weren’t included in the contracts. They definitely weren’t. That was the whole point of them. If they’d been included in the contracts, they would have had to have paid tax on them.

“I don’t think a lot of the other directors knew an awful lot about it. David Murray kept everything to himself. The directors just wanted to sit in the directors’ box. That’s all. When I was on the board I knew all about them.

“i just didn’t know the details of them. They became accepted. The revenue were seriously challenging them at that point when I was a director. People never really asked serious questions about them. ‘It’s perfectly legal,’ is what they thought.”

The allegations, if true, would contravene the SFA’s registration on rules, which stipulate that all payments made to a player for their onfield activities must be clearly recorded in contracts.

Stewart Regan, the SFA chief executive, this morning provided an update on the progress of the independent Inquiry into Rangers chaired by The Right Honourable Lord Nimmo Smith.

He said: “We are now in the final stages of our independent inquiry into the situation concerning Rangers FC. The report by The Right Honourable Lord Nimmo Smith is expected to be completed next week and will go to a Special Board Meeting for consideration.

“It would be inappropriate to make any further comment at this stage in relation to the details gleaned from the inquiry, the potential contents of the report or any possible sanctions.

“We are, however, aware of the most recent allegations made against Rangers FC today