I'm sure many of us who have written to this organisation are familiar with this statement. In fact I'm willing to bet that thousands of Bears across the world have letters with the aforesaid phrase included. My advice – keep them, you may find a need for them in the future.
I asked HMRC a different question. Well actually I asked it of David Gauke MP at the Treasury who, interestingly, rather than answer the question, referred me to the Ministerial Unit at HMRC. The question I asked, as some of you will be remember was “Did HMRC report report the leaks relative to the Rangers Tax Case to the Police ?”
I receive a long winded response which failed to answer the question. In other words waffle. I have sent another letter asking for confirmation.
You see HMRC have a problem. A problem which increased in magnitude following the Nimmo Report, where the learned Lord Nimmo commented in [98] :-
Meanwhile, BBC Scotland came, by unknown means, into possession of what they described as “dozens of secret emails, letters and documents”, which we understand were the productions before the Tax Tribunal.
Now allow me to elaborate. The term “productions” is a legal description for evidence i.e. the murder weapon in a murder case would be a “production”. What Lord Nimmo is referring to is the various documents etc. which were seized during the HMRC investigation into Rangers and which were evidence or as Lord Nimmo refers to – productions - in the BTC. Now in any criminal or civil case for that matter where there are copious amounts of productions the investigative body will keep what is known as a Production Register. This carefully catalogue every single evidential item and assign it a Production Number for easy cross referencing at a later date.
Therefore when the Rangers Tax Case Blog was proudly revealing yet another “exclusive” which some in the journalistic community were moved to describe as “sourced from within HMRC” it would have been a simple matter for someone at HMRC to review the document on the Rangers Tax Case Blog and then compare it to their own Production Register. If any of that documentation matched then that should have set alarms bell ringing (actually booming) within HMRC. So did they ?
If they haven't then they have failed to take all reasonable steps to protect confidentiality, furthermore they have failed to take all reasonable steps to protect evidence which they have seized, and I would respectfully suggest that given they are bound by the Official Secrets Act, they have failed, not only to investigate, but report a crime which is rightfully viewed as grave in this country.
But let me give HMRC the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Let us suppose they did cross reference the exclusives on the Rangers Tax Case Blog with their own Productions Register and found that they matched. What action did they take ?
Did they instigate an internal enquiry ?
In fact were they qualified or equipped to undertake such enquiry.
Given that such leaks constitute serious criminality did they report this to the Police ?
It is perhaps significant that following the result of the FTTT Sir David Murray, through his legal representatives, wrote to Crown Office, asking for a criminal enquiry to be launched into the leaks. This suggests that no such enquiry was currently underway and that HMRC had not reported the leaks to the Police.
Of course the Police have different powers and tools for investigation than HMRC. The Police have DNA/Fingerprinting, the power to search homes, seize computers demand ISP addresses as well as many other investigative tools and powers which are not available to HMRC.
The spotlight is now firmly focussed on whether HMRC took all reasonable steps to protect the confidentiality and security of the evidence it had seized. That spotlight will not be turned off until every Rangers fan has answers to the question posed in this article.
Tick Tock.
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