http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepag...een-played-up-front-for-me.html#ixzz2PXhNgzTT
DEFIANT Craig Whyte claims he STILL owns Rangers — and chief executive Charles Green was a frontman for HIM.
Disgraced Whyte insists he has a dossier of evidence which proves his case.
And he claims he has proof to back up his allegation that he was conned.
The Scottish Sun has seen a bombshell warning letter Whyte sent to Green and former Rangers director Imran Ahmad days before the recent £22million flotation deal.
We have also obtained secret recordings Whyte made in meetings with Green, Ahmad and Ibrox finance director Brian Stockbridge apparently discussing the takeover of Rangers.
Whyte — who plans a £50million court case — says the evidence proves he and partner Aidan Earley were conned in that deal and the subsequent flotation in December was ILLEGAL.
And he says he also has evidence his involvement in the takeover was kept secret from the SPL and SFL. Last night a source said: “These are dynamite claims and it will be interesting if this does end up in the courts. Conspiracy theorists will be having a field day.”
Sevco 5088 Ltd and Green bought Rangers for £5.5million in June, 2012.
Green transferred the assets — including Murray Park and Ibrox — to a new company called Sevco Scotland days later. Whyte claims the £50million assets were transferred illegally because Green didn’t have his or Earley’s permission. His warning letter — prepared by a London QC — says Whyte and Earley intend to sue Green and Ahmad for deception and breach of contract.
It says Earley approached Ahmad at finance firm Zeus Capital to participate in the takeover, as Whyte wanted a frontman. He believed his negative publicity would “hinder any deal”.
The letter says Ahmad then told Earley he had ‘just the right guys’ — referring to businessman Rafat Rizvi and Green. Whyte claims Ahmad introduced Green and Rizvi to him at a London hotel on May 1 last year. It’s alleged Rizvi and Ahmad agreed to raise funds for the deal while Green would front it. The letter also says that all parties agreed Earley and Whyte would have a majority shareholding in Sevco 5088.
And it alleges that Ahmad, Rizvi, Green and Earley would share a £250,000 fee and ten per cent of share capital raised.
In one of Whyte’s recordings of their meetings, Green says: “You are Sevco, that’s what we are saying.” In a second tape Ahmad discusses Rizvi and how he will represent him on the board. He says: “Charles can’t do anything... you should regard us as your reps (inaudible) no loyalties to Charles, to Rafat (inaudible) as well.” And in the third Ahmad says he could only be the chief executive officer of Rangers if he got the go-ahead from Whyte, and that Green was terrified of the job.
Ahmad says: “I could do that but that can only be at your insistence, only with your majority stake. He’s terrified of the job, it’s a high pressure job.”
Green, 59, has always denied that venture capitalist Whyte was part of his consortium but has admitted meeting him in London.
Last night he said: “Whyte is trying to tout that he was behind the whole deal. He says he has tape recordings of Imran and me saying that he is Sevco 5088. Which is all true. We were warned before we ever met him that he would be taping things.
“What we had to do at the start was get the confidence of this guy for him to give us the shares, to give us the debentures, to do a whole raft of things. I’m not worried about what I’ve said on tape.”
Whyte’s warning letter says December’s flotation on the AIM Stock would “perpetrate a fraud” on himself and potential investors as the assets were still owned by him through Sevco 5088.
But Green hit back: “The only agreements that I entered into with Craig Whyte were that he would hand the shares over and the indemnity to enable the CVA to go ahead and in the event that it didn’t go ahead then those shares and that company would go back to Whyte.
“It would be no good to me anyway because we were now going down the Newco route and that’s why we had this Sevco 5088 and Sevco Scotland.
“The agreements between Craig Whyte and Sevco were that that was conditional on the CVA.”