Six charges in Rangers oldco fraud case dropped

PROSECUTORS have withdrawn six of 15 charges in the alleged fraud case over Rangers as they made amendments to the indictment.

Picture: wikimedia.org

Among the allegations dropped by the Crown was a charge that the joint administrators, David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, attempted to pervert the course of justice.

They also withdrew a charge that the pair along with former Rangers owner Craig Whyte, Gary Withey and David Grier agreed to do something that they knew or suspected or ought reasonably to have known or suspected would enable or further the commission of serious organised crime.

Whitehouse, 50, and Clark, 51, were also taken out of an amended charge which now alleges that Whyte, 45, Withey, 51, and Grier, 54, conspired together between January 1 in 2010 and May 6 in 2011 to obtain a controlling stake in the shareholding of the Ibrox club.

A further charge alleging that Whyte, Whitehouse, Clark and former chief executive at Rangers Charles Green, 62, participated in a conspiracy to buy the business and assets of The Rangers Football Club plc in 2012 from the administrators at significantly below the true market value was also dropped.

All the men continue to face charges in the case in which a preliminary hearing is taking place at the High Court in Edinburgh before Lord Bannatyne.

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