Rangers: Police inquiry into takeover saw police travel world
Two police officers travelled the world on taxpayer’s money while they were supposed to be investigating Rangers’ botched takeover in 2011.
According to The Times, Detective Chief Inspector Jim Robertson and Detective Chief Inspector Jacqueline O’Neill, who led the investigations which arose after the failed sale of the Ibrox club, went to South Africa and the United States during the process for meetings.
In New York, they supposedly stayed for five days with meetings only being held on two of those days as they wanted to go sightseeing while on official business.
Andrew Gregory, a solicitor, spoke to the Times about the alleged gallivanting and said, “After lunch [Robertson and O’Neill] became increasingly agitated. Robertson said they were keen to see the sights of New York.
“Although the business of the meeting was expected to be completed that day they told me they intended to return to Scotland later in the week, so they could spend time exploring the city.
“The meetings could easily have been dealt with by way of phone calls and an exchange of emails. It seemed clear they were holidaying when they were on the job.”
With the investigation funded by the taxpayer, the duo supposedly racked up five figures of expenditure before the failed investigation cost £40million for a public inquiry.
Shameful
For two very high-standing officials to conduct themselves so poorly is sadly not a surprise but something that definitely needs acting upon.
Rangers were going through an extremely difficult time and it didn’t improve for a long time after that while they globe-trotted here, there and everywhere without good reason.
Had this been in the age of no technology then you could excuse them flying out for meetings if they needed to but the video conferencing and phone calls of today mean that there was absolutely no reason to be doing this.
Something has to be done to these two and their bosses who allow them to go on such trips without good reason and whether that be giving the money back in fines or prison time if they can’t do that, then they need to suck it up and accept their fate because we nearly lost our club while they enjoyed themselves working our case.
In other Rangers news, ourselves and Frankfurt are combining to send UEFA a dossier on how they can improve their organisation after the shambles of the Europa League final water crisis.