The Scottish Football Association, in seeking to defend itself from allegations that it unfairly awarded Rangers a licence to play in Europe in 2011/2012, appears to have admitted that it withheld evidence from the Lord Nimmo Smith inquiry into rule breaking by the club in its use of tax avoidance schemes. In 2013, a commission…
The Offshore Game can reveal that Companies House has started enforcement action against the company which controls Bolton Wanderers Football Club after the club failed to file their annual accounts. Bolton’s accounts for 2015 are now more than 6 months past their due date. Failing to file annual accounts is a criminal offence for which both…
This week Parliament held a session to question the new chairman of the FA, Greg Clarke. The session came after revelations were published in the Telegraph concerning the conduct of senior members of the game, including the England manager Sam Allardyce. We were pleased that the Offshore Game’s study on the offshore ownership of football…
This seems like a good time for a quick round-up. It’s been a few weeks since we published a report into misgovernance at the Scottish Football Association, calling for an independent inquiry to ensure a level playing field and greater accountability to fans. Now things are moving… To recap briefly, we identified two main issues around the SFA’s…
Over the last week, someone operating an anonymous twitter account and an anonymous email account has claimed repeatedly that the Offshore Game withheld evidence in our report. He/She/It also claimed that because we did not immediately reply to his/her/its accusations, we were not committed to ‘transparency’. Seriously? But we do think it’s useful to discuss the evidence,…
Since publishing our report we have had a number of people contact us about a post elsewhere which questioned our conclusions on the grant of a UEFA license to Rangers in 2011. Further to this we have been in email communication with the writer/s of the post and discussed their position. We would like to note that…
The Offshore Game has been approached by an anonymous fan of Rangers Football Club who raised a couple of issues with the language used in our report. After considering the issues raised we have made a couple of non-material corrections to our report. We would like to stress that we approach this subject from the…
Bolton Wanderers was not the only club facing bankruptcy in Court on Monday. Ipswich Town were also on the court list. The Managing director of Ipswich, Ian Milne (Registered address Ireland’s International Finance Centre) took to the airwaves to reassure the supporters. This was simply a mixup with a ‘service provider’. There was confusion over an…