Craig Whyte: 'I should have put Rangers into administration in October'

Rangers owner Craig Whyte has told STV News he should have put the club into administration four months before he did.

Mr Whyte said he should have acted in October instead of appointing Duff and Phelps in February.

He was speaking a day after he was fined £200,000 and banned for life from "any participation" in Scottish football by the Scottish Football Association for breaking SFA rules and bring the game into disrepute,

The administrators are still trying to find a buyer for the club, with ex-Rangers director Paul Murray’s Blue Knights consortium and American businessman Bill Miller bidding for the club.  

On February 14, when the club went into administration, Duff and Phelps revealed the club had not paid £9m in PAYE and VAT since Mr Whyte took over in May 2011. When asked about this non-payment, Mr Whyte responded: "We had £4m frozen at the bank.

"We took advice at the time to wait until the January transfer window (before we paid PAYE, VAT etc) but perhaps we should have put it into administration in October before the debt built up but it’s not a decision to take lightly. 

"We were in regular dialogue with HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs) and at one stage they asked us not to go into administration."

Mr Whyte also said he had no preference over Mr Miller’s bid or that of the Blue Knights and insisted that his arrival at Rangers did not make things worse for the club.

He said: "Nobody has spoken to me about this (the bids) since Friday. I’m willing to talk to anybody who’s interested. What everybody is missing here is that when I bought the club for £1, it was a mess long before I bought it. I certainly haven’t made things any worse.

"It’s a difficult time at the moment but the problems existed long before I took over. To blame me for everything is absurd."

Asked about the prospect of Rangers being liquidated, he commented: "I would really hope not, but the SFA haven’t been helpful. The administration process has taken longer than it should have done.

"I don’t think I made anything worse than it already was. I took decisive action to put the club into administration which should have been the solution to all the problems."

Mr Whyte struck a £25.3m deal with ticketing agency Ticketus for just over 100,000 Ibrox season tickets until 2015. The Rangers owner earlier admitted using £18m of that money to wipe out the club’s debt with Lloyds Banking Group, essentially allowing him to complete his takeover last year.

On the Ticketus situation, he added: "There was all sorts of advice given back then, from three sets of lawyers, financial advisors, the advice was that it wasn’t financial assistance. I’m not a legal expert but I took the advice of legal advisors.

"Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I’m not used to dealing with the glare of publicity. With hindsight everything should have been put out into the open from day one. But we are where we are. I’m dealing with the rest of my life. If anybody wants to talk to me they know where I am."

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