World Exclusive! – Ticketus Try to Liquidate Craig Whyte’s Main Company, Liberty Capital

I have commented on matters of Scots law, as per the name of the blog, and English law. But, so far, I have not mentioned the law applicable to the British Virgin Islands.

But that changes today!

Ticketus, who successfully won a court order against Craig Whyte, have now applied for the liquidation of Liberty Capital Ltd, the BVI company which owned 100% of Wavetower Ltd which was the vehicle used to effect Mr Whyte’s purchase of 85% of the shares of Rangers Football Club PLC (oldco) which was in turn as we must now know it, the company which formerly owned the assets and business of Rangers Football Club (whew).

Craig Whyte, Gold Dealer + LeaveBritain.com or “The Tale of a Suave Bullionaire”

I must thank, as I start, the extraordinarily diligent Billybhoy68 for his fantastic and thorough research on this and the following piece. The raw material and much of the analysis is down to him – I have merely inserted some extra verbiage in what is, at the very least, a very ironic tale, and at worst, could be …. Well, who knows!

Mr Whyte, as we all now know, was disqualified for seven years in 2000 from being a company director in the UK. The Sunday Herald yesterday raised questions about his company, Liberty Capital Ltd, registered in the British Virgin Islands, doing business in the UK during that period. Even though that is perfectly legal, it does seem to raise questions about the efficacy of the company disqualification laws, where they could be circumvented by means of an offshore company (although it is not suggested that Mr Whyte indulged in any such doubtfully legal behaviour).

Billybhoy68 was also intrigued by this period in Mr Whyte’s life. Did Mr Whyte, he wondered, devote all his time and energy to running his BVI operations from his home in the playground of the rich and famous in Monaco?

The detective work which follows is worthy of Sherlock at his very best!

LeaveBritain.com

We start with the above domain which was registered on 15^th April 2004. It is an interesting and either a nostalgic or precient domain name, to say the least.

It becomes more so when we see, as shown below, the email address of the “Administrative contact”. (If, like me, the eyesight is not as good as it was, click on each image to enlarge.)

That is a Mr David Smith, whose email address is given as ctw@libertycapital.biz. Now, do we know of anyone with the initials CTW and a connection with a company called Liberty Capital? Yes, I think we do!

Sadly “David Smith” is such a common name that we have not been able to locate him. It would be wrong to make any accusation that this was a name created by Mr Whyte for the occasion. It is almost certainly one of his hapless admin staff who, as we know, are dreadful at keeping track of the official paperwork. Mr Whyte would therefore be quite justified in making sure that his underling’s email went to him personally.

You will also notice the phone number listed under the Florida address “3054338101”.

That leads us on to the next part of the story.