Famous Rangers Fans

Es gibt so einige, die "schillerndste" reiche Figur ist derzeit wohl Dave King, ein Brite der in Südafrika sein Geld gemacht hat, dort aber vom Staat wegen diversen "Steuervergehen" angeklagt wurde. Vieles geht da allerding nicht mit rechten Dingen zu, wie folgende Artikel zeigen

Zitat

Dave King vows to attack other cases against him

by Stephen Hofstatter, Mzilikazi Wa Afrika and Rob Rose, September 16 2012, 11:39

A "BUNGLED" prosecution that let billionaire businessman Dave King off the hook for fraud and racketeering could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions in damages and legal fees.

King said this week he would use his acquittal to attack other cases against him and launch a R300-million damages claim for wrongful prosecution.

King said the case showed that the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had "no hope" of even taking commercial cases to court, let alone successfully getting a prosecution in their favour, partly due to a lack of skills, internal rivalry and low morale.

"I don't believe the NPA could prosecute even a mildly [complicated] case. In a complex commercial case, they've got zero, zero, zero chance," he said.

Judge Margaret Victor was forced to acquit both King and MICROmega CEO Greg Morris last Friday, after one of the most bizarre reversals in recent history, when the NPA rested its case, failing to call all but five of the 71 expert witnesses, including Xstrata boss Mick Davis, Old Mutual, Sanlam and others.

"It was astounding," said one of the witnesses who was not called. "We were all ready to testify, and it is incomprehensible why the prosecutors effectively rested the state's case." Having signed confidentiality statements, witnesses could not speak on the record.

"They've done a huge amount of homework over the last two years, so [resting the case like that] is poor. It's not good enough to say that there are still criminal charges in the tax case against him," said the witness.

In acquitting King, Judge Victor also slammed the NPA for failing to put up a case, and criticised a number of "highly irregular" actions. These included conducting a search-and-seizure operation without authority and failing to store documents and a seized computer properly.

King described this as a "momentous defeat for the NPA", which is likely to have ramifications for other corporate crimes it is trying to prosecute, including those of construction firms accused of rigging World Cup stadium tenders and the Ponzi scheme case against Barry Tannenbaum.

Although the 37 criminal charges related to Specialised Outsourcing were withdrawn, King still has 322 charges of tax fraud that he is defending, but they will not be in court for many months.

King said he had racked up R400-million in legal bills for his various cases to date, and estimated the state had spent even more. This is in addition to R636-million that the state effectively forfeited when the NPA torpedoed a signed settlement with King in 2009.

SA Revenue Services (SARS) confirmed it had spent close to R200-million on legal costs. This excludes an unknown sum spent by the NPA in bringing the fraud charges against King that fell apart this week.

But SARS spokesman Adrian Lackay stressed it had won a judgment against King's company Ben Nevis for a R2.75-billion tax liability in 2010.

SARS had recovered "significant amounts through the sale of assets for which various court orders were obtained. This included the sale of a Falcon jet. SARS would continue civil litigation to recover outstanding tax debts," Lackay said. "Money spent on litigation should be seen in this context."

SARS has also frozen King's assets overseas estimated to be worth R800-million in places like Scotland and Guernsey - freezing orders he will now try to overturn using this week's acquittal.

Lackay said the SARS international freezing order was not based on this case.

During the case, which ran in the South Gauteng High Court from August 3, prosecutors claimed King had conned companies like Old Mutual and lied to the JSE when he made more than R1-billion by selling shares in Specialised Outsourcing in 1999.

A 1999 report by former Investec analyst Andrew Cuffe accused King of misleading shareholders and recommended investors avoid the company.

King claimed Cuffe's research report had been "discredited by Investec itself", but CEO Stephen Koseff said through a spokesman he had "no recollection of such a conversation".

A 2001 forensic report by Ernst & Young said there was a "fundamental error in the preparation of Specialised Outsourcing's financial statements for 1998 and 1999".

King was also later accused of secretly selling his trust's shares in Specialised Outsourcing. But King responded: "Who did they think they were buying the shares from? They knew I had all the shares."

He said that if the institutional investors had a justifiable gripe with him they would have launched a civil action.

The NPA said in a statement it was forced to acquit King after "a material witness" crucial to proving the authenticity of key documents was unable to testify for health reasons, which resulted in the documents being ruled inadmissible.

Spokesman Bulelwa Makeke said she could not comment.

The NPA annual report shows that it had a conviction rate of 91.6% when it came to "complex commercial crimes" for 2011/2012.

But this does not show that the NPA enrolled only 754 cases during that time - about half the number it was prosecuting three years before, suggesting it was cherry-picking the easiest cases.

* This article was first published in Sunday Times: Business Times

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Business DAy Live

Und aufbauend darauf zwei weitere, aktuellere Beiträge ...

Zitat

King strikes ‘confidential’ deal with SARS

by Amanda Visser, 20 März 2013, 05:59

BUSINESSMAN Dave King and several companies associated with him have quietly reached a confidential settlement with the South African Revenue Service (SARS) that saw two provisional preservation orders being made final on Thursday — in spite of his vowing to fight to prevent just that.

The preservation orders, made final by the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday, will see several South African assets belonging to Mr King and the companies that are associated with him sold, including Metlika Trading, Talacar Holdings, Gaius Atticus and Ben Nevis.

Mr King will be allowed to continue living in his Sandhurst property in Johannesburg until January 7 next year. The property will then be transferred to Sechaba Trust director Cloete Murray, who was appointed as curator in the first preservation order.

Several efforts to obtain comment from Mr King yesterday were unsuccessful.

He had been back and forth to court since SARS was granted the initial order in November.

Mr King came to SARS’s attention after the sale of shares in JSE-listed Specialised Outsourcing in 1997. Ben Nevis owned the majority interest in Specialised Outsourcing, established by Mr King. Tax assessments by SARS against Mr King and Ben Nevis at the time were close to R2bn.

The proceeds of the sale of assets preserved by the orders will be paid to SARS to offset the tax debt that has been outstanding for more than a decade. The assets include the Sandhurst home, properties in Plettenberg Bay, a Fancourt property and vehicles.

Mr King has also been ordered to resign as a director of Talacar and Gaius Atticus. He and Talacar were ordered to sign all necessary documents to register the 49% shareholding, previously held in the Gary Player Stud Farm by Talacar, in Mr Murray’s name.

SARS obtained a second preservation order last month for all the South African assets held by Mr King and his wife and children to prevent the dissipation of assets, after it became known at the end of last year that a shareholding in Talacar had been transferred to Mr King’s family in conflict with a court order already obtained by SARS in 2010.

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Business Day Live

Und ...

Zitat

LAST WORD: Cocky NPA left red-faced by Dave King

by Rob Rose, 24 März 2013, 08:48

TWO years ago, prosecutions boss Menzi Simelane told me that he didn’t care if the state spent R1bn sending Dave King to jail for breaking the tax laws — it would be money well spent.

It was a curious statement, first because it implied Simelane was a man of high principle while at the same time suggesting the Scottish-born King was something of a fiendish Al Capone character, on whom all the might of the state should be expended.

The truth, on both counts, is very different. Simelane, as we know, was booted from his position by the Constitutional Court last October, essentially for not being a fit and proper person.

But his high-handed statement had come months after the NPA vetoed a “settlement” in 2009 that would have seen King pay R636m to close the book on a tax dispute dating back to 2002.

No, Simelane said, we’ll put that fiendish King in jail before we do any dirty backroom deal.

So, news this week that King has, in fact, reached some settlement over certain assets in the long-running soap opera that has become his tax dispute was a welcome sign. Let’s hope this thaw in the relationship is a precursor to a larger settlement of the entire sorry mess.

Because, let’s face it, government’s ham-fisted pursuit of King hasn’t reflected well on its ability to nail those who it believes have wronged it.

In particular, the National Prosecuting Authority has been embarrassed by King in a way that ought to provide a fillip to anyone plotting any halfway well-constructed white-collar con.

Last August — more than a decade after the event — the NPA finally took King to court over 37 counts of fraud for supposedly defrauding companies like Old Mutual and lying to the JSE when he made R1bn by selling shares in a company called Specialised Outsourcing in 1999.

It would have been one of the country’s most important corporate fraud cases. Ignore the fact that Specialised Outsourcing does not exist any more, ignore the fact that witnesses would be hard-pressed to remember what happened 12 years before.

No matter, the cocky NPA assured us: it had spent the last decade firming up a cast-iron case, it had impeccable witnesses, nothing could go wrong.

So, it was a surprise to these witnesses when the NPA simply closed its case last September after calling only five of its 71 expert witnesses.

Judge Margaret Victor acquitted King, slamming the NPA for failing to put up a case.

One witness called the NPA’s bungling “astounding” and “incomprehensible”.

The bottom line remains: if a guy is really guilty of what you say he is, and you can’t prove it in a decade, you really have no business being in the law-enforcement game.

For King, this only suggested his claims of being victimised and hounded by the NPA in order to settle his tax case were justified.

Now, there are some good, solid professionals at the NPA, who do know what they’re doing. Not all of them have been suspended, like Glynnis Breytenbach.

But there are others — usually in management — for whom a weekly fitting of red noses and oversized shoes wouldn’t be an entirely inappropriate use of money.

Partly thanks to their blundering, King almost has government over a barrel.

In recent weeks, King has -rightly -used the judgment to travel overseas to “unfreeze” cash that had been seized in Jersey and Guernsey.

By all accounts, the overseas courts weren’t amused that all this cash had been frozen more than a decade earlier, yet King hadn’t pleaded to the numerous criminal charges he faced.

Simelane’s sentiment was that a conviction would send a message of “no tolerance” to South Africa’s businessmen. So this is why government has thrown vast sums of money -estimated at more than R400m — on this principle. Along the way, it turned down R636m from King.

Altogether, that’s hundreds of millions at which the government has turned up its nose.

Disregarding the merits of the actual charges against King, the really worrying thing is the message that this decade-long circus act will send to the real Al Capones of South Africa’s corporate sector.

Do your worst, it says, and if you’re really, really unlucky, you’ll face a trial in about a decade or so.

The best thing for the state agencies would be to settle this sorry mess, bank a settlement from King, and sit in a dark room until the red cheeks fade.

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Business Day Live

... doch wie schnell er an sein Eingefrorenes kommt steht in den Sternen.

Derzeit sind 12 Rand = 1 Euro

Andere Reiche Leute mit blauen Tendenzen ...

The Top 100 Scots ...

No, 6 Jim McColl 1bn

No, 15 Rodger Jenkins 275m

No, 17 Brian Kennedy 232m assc Bear

No, 75 Douglas Park 78m

The following defo not Bears

No, 27 Sir Willie Haughey 155m

No, 36 Stewart Milne 140m

No, 72 Sir Sean Connery 80m

Dont knows,

No, 11 Sir Arnold Clark 508m

No, 40 Sir Tom Farmer 132m

Zitat

Former Rangers director Dave King is investigating a bid to wrest control of the club from Charles Green and his investment cronies.

But the South African based businessman – who lost £20m via a previous investment in the Ibrox club – faces stiff opposition from Greenock bus tycoon James Easdale.

Easdale and his brother Sandy – jailed for VAT fraud in 1997 – have approached Green over the sale of his 8 per cent stake. The siblings, who own McGill’s Buses, already hold 6 per cent and are keen to secure representation on the Ibrox board.

Ibrox return? Dave King, the former Rangers director, is weighing up a bid to take over from Charles Green
However Castlemilk-born King has told Sportsmail that he intends to ask the institutional investors behind the Yorkshireman if they will sell to him instead.
Aware of the move by the Easdale brothers to buy Green’s eight per cent shareholding, the 57-year-old is currently trying to establish precisely who owns the other shares with a view to making a counter move.
'I am very much assessing my position at the moment,' said King from Johannesburg.

'Right now I am trying to get as much information as I can to understand the true corporate structure behind Rangers.
'I am trying to discover if the investors would be in a position now to consider their situation.
'Most people don’t want to lose money.
'But I want to find a different way forward. And the removal of Charles Green certainly provides an opportunity to take things a forward a different way at Rangers.
'I want to see if the individuals who own the shares are amenable to having a discussion.
'The issue is not one of just buying Charles Green’s shares. His eight per cent does not make much difference
'There is no point in being a minority shareholder with no influence or power.
'But now there are two possibilities.
'One is that his shareholders regroup and find another man and continue to support him. In which case we have a continuation of that previous regime and things will catch up with them in a year or two.
'Or, alternatively, if the shareholders are in any way uncomfortable and want to exit then this may be the opportunity now for others to come in.
'And one of those could be me.'
The legal claim of former owner Craig Whyte to the club’s assets further complicates the picture.
However King is dismissive of the former owner, saying: 'I would discount Whyte completely.'
King has been linked with bids for the club in the past, but was frustrated by a freeze on his UK assets by the South African Revenue Service (SARS). In November he won a six year battle to have the order lifted, freeing him to invest in UK companies.

Last month he reached a confidential agreement with SARS which will see several of his South African companies and assets sold to offset a tax debt disputed for well over a decade.
The Glaswegian also entered into correspondence with the SFA last year and believes his legal team can convince the governing body he is a ‘fit and proper person’ to return to the Ibrox boardroom.
‘The response of the SFA was that because it was only allegations they would take representations from my legal team and if they could convince them I had a strong case then there would be no issue.'

There will also be questions over the involvement – if any - of Sandy Easdale in the Ibrox acquisitions of his brother James. Jailed for 27 months in 1997 the tycoon received VIP treatment from Green prior to investing in the recent share issue.
McGill’s Buses are Scotland’s largest independent bus operator and employ 700 staff from their Greenock HQ.
Last night Rangers sources claimed they had no knowledge of Green agreeing definitively to sell his shares.
However, the matter was discussed at a board meeting yesterday, where the interim appointment of Craig Mathers – a Green investor – as interim Chief Executive also moved closer.

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Aus der Daily Mail, allerding von Gersnet geholt .. Daily Mail article

Wie es scheint hat er jetzt aber (bald) wieder freie Hand über sein Geld in Europa und ist die Steuerhaie in der RSA los. Anders als McColl wäre er auch eine Bluenose.

Keine Ahnung, ob er nun wirklich reich ist, aber eine Bluenose ist er allemal, Graeme Dott. Man achte auf den Einmarsch-Song:

Hier seine Vorstellung bei den diesjährigen Weltmeisterschaften in Sheffield's Crucible.

Sie ist zwar nicht reich, aber berühmt (Cale, kannst du die Überschrift mal modifizieren?)!

Zitat

Silver Service For Lynsey at Ibrox

Monday, 04 August 2014 19:00 - Written by Rangers Football Club

COMMONWEALTH Games star Lynsey Sharp will be a guest of the club at tomorrow’s Petrofac Training Cup tie against Hibs.

The 24-year-old Scot, who is a huge Rangers fan, won silver in the women’s 800m event last week at Hampden after recovering from a sickness bug and she will take in the Light Blues opening game of the season at Ibrox.

Not long after winning silver in her fantastic run in the final, Lynsey took to Twitter to say how she'd love to go out onto the pitch at Ibrox and we are delighted to be able to invite her to do just that:

Soooooo when am I getting on the pitch at Ibrox ??!!!! Haha #TogetherRFC
— Lynsey Sharp (@LynseySharp) August 1, 2014

Lynsey will show off her medal when she takes to the pitch and everyone at the Club is delighted to welcome her to the Stadium.

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RFC und hier das Bild von ihr

(Man beachte auch den Eintrag im Celtic - KnewCo - Thread von heute.)

Zitat

Fans' Support Has Been Amazing

LYNSEY SHARP expressed her gratitude to Rangers fans for their support after they gave her a rousing reception before last night’s game with Hibernian.

RFC

Rangers FC @RangersFC · 8 Min.
"Some people don’t like speaking about the team they support but I’m really proud to be a #Rangers fan." @LynseySharp http://rng.rs/1qVB48i

Rangers FC @RangersFC · 6 Std.
.@LynseySharp: " It was totally amazing and I’ve had so much support from the Rangers fans." http://rng.rs/1qVB48i

Yoah, sag das eben auch und mal völlig neutral gesprochen, sind beide nicht unbedingt die häßlichsten Exemplare unserer Gattung ... schön für beide also.

Off The Ball today - with Amy MacDonald

Amy Macdonald was the guest today and listeners were asked to text in with a 'football-related" Amy Macdonald song to play out the show.

The song, obviously requested by a Bear, was 'This is the Life' and dedicated to Scott Brown, with the immortal line, played repeatedly:

'Where you gonna sleep tonight? <- click

They read out a text from a ceptic fan asking her to include the word sevco in a song.
She stated she would not, but she would include the word OBSESSED.

Loved her reply when they asked her about the top gear job
"I couldnt work for the bbc"

Es ist leider ein Marotte dieser Zeit, daß man immer mit Extremen um sich wirft. Man "hasst" alles gleich, oder es ist der "worst ever" und so weiter. Ein sehr liberaler Umgang mit der Sprache ... oder eben auch Verarmung derselben. Was kein Vorwurf an Amy ist ... und man braucht sich auf den Fanboards auch nicht drüber aufregen - was auch nur in Maßen getan wird. Nach dem Spiel hätten tausende Bluenoses ganz andere Dinge zu Senderos und Co. gesagt (oder mit ihnen gemacht), wenn man sie gelassen hätte.

Augenscheinlich ist nur Barton der Kragen geplatzt und er hat ihnen allen am nächsten Tag mal die Leviten gelesen ... was augenscheinlich einige nicht gut vertragen haben, inklusive MW. Meiner Meinung hätte uns Barton danach auf dem Platz eher gut getan, aber aus der Sicht von jetzt ist das alles einfach ... und Geschichte.

Amy durfte mal ran und die EPL-Ergebnisse vorhersagen ...

Premier League predictions: Lawro v singer Amy Macdonald

BBC Sport's football expert Mark Lawrenson is pitting his wits against a different guest each week this season.
Lawro's opponent for this weekend's Premier League fixtures is singer-songwriter Amy Macdonald.
Macdonald has been a fan of Scottish Premiership side Rangers since she went to watch them for the first time, aged 10.
"It was Walter Smith's testimonial match at Ibrox against Liverpool in 1998," she told BBC Sport. "Rangers won 1-0 and from that moment I was pretty hooked.
"I was a bit of a tomboy at school. I loved to sit with the boys and discuss football and I was always a bit of a statto - I knew everything that was going on with every team.
"Growing up in Glasgow, it is such a massive footballing city that it is hard not to be involved in that. I don't know anybody who is not interested in football - everyone has got an opinion."

[Blockierte Grafik: http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/onespo…95474418_amymacdonald.jpg]

Macdonald's fourth album, Under Stars, was released in February and she is currently touring the UK. "I don't have much time to go to Rangers games because I am constantly on the road and my diary is full until next year," she says. "But it is great being on tour because there are are a lot of us who follow football - my manager is a Huddersfield fan, some of the crew support Manchester United and my drummer supports Spurs, so there is a really diverse mix.

Macdonald, who is engaged to St Johnstone right-back Richard Foster, has experienced good and bad times as a Rangers supporter, with the club now back in the Scottish top flight after being liquidated and placed in Division Three in 2012.
"It has been a crazy few years," she explained. "When I first became a fan and started to get really into football it was the Dick Advocaat era and at that point there were so many amazing players that were signed.
"There were people like Lorenzo Amoruso, who became cult heroes at Rangers. Someone like him would be my ultimate favourite, but there were so many incredible players in the team that it was an absolute pleasure to be a fan back then.
"Obviously everything that has happened since then has proved that being a football fan is a massive roller-coaster and you have incredible highs and terrible lows, which has happened over the past few years.
"I think a lot of fans were glad when Rangers got back in the top division but I still think there is a long way to go to get the team back to where they were and back to where a lot of the fans expect them to be."

http://www.bbc.com/sport/football/39504741

Und natürlich kann es sich die BBC nicht nehmen lassen, erneut vom "club .... after being liquidated" zu sprechen. Tut mir leid, daß ist weder ungewollt noch mal eben so durchgerutscht. Blanke Absicht von einem Haufen kranker Möchtegern-Journalisten unter dem Deckmantel einer Seriösen Rundfunkanstalt.