Rogue businessman Craig Whyte emerges in new tax avoidance venture
Rogue businessman Craig Whyte has crawled out of the shadows to offer advice on tax avoidance.
The disgraced former Rangers owner - who is banned from being a company director - is shamelessly advising dodgy business clients guidance on how to deprive the taxman of revenue.
The service - which ultimately hammers taxpayers - comes despite Whyte serving a maximum 15 year ban from being a director in the UK.
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Whyte- who is obsessed with tax avoidance - has tried to keep a low profile since he took Rangers to the brink of oblivion in 2012, when was cleared of criminal charges in relation to the case.
In 2020 the Daily Record exposed Whyte for operating in a shady firm fronted by his dodgy dad Tom, that encouraged company directors to dodge tax and deprive employees of redundancy money.
The firm, Fortress Restructuring Ltd, was wound up in 2021 and Tom Whyte was banned from being a director for 10 years after the company illegally claimed a £50,000 “bounceback loan” - of which £37,000 was clawed back by liquidators.
Despite the ongoing shame for the Whyte family, Craig brazenly sat down to tell the world of his seedy services in the Craig Campbell SEO podcast on YouTube.
He told the host: “Nobody should say it’s somehow immoral to avoid taxes.
“Everybody who is in business should be minimising the amount of tax that they’re paying.
“If you are paying tax in the UK, 95 per cent of it is wasted. It’s going mainly to pay civil servants and retired civil servants.”
The astonishing obsession with tax dodging also led Whyte to brand those who collect tax ‘parasites’.
He said: “I think there is a moral duty to get money away from the non-productive side of the economy which is the state. Get money away from these parasites like politicians and bureaucrats.
“I’m very keen to share methods whereby people can do that whether it’s by using trusts or offshore companies.”
He states that his methods are legal - but UK authorities are under huge pressure to crack down on offshore tax avoidance.
Whyte was cleared of fraudulently taking over Rangers after a 31-day trial in 2017.
Prosecutors claimed that he duped the Ibrox owner Sir David Murray by telling him he had cash “immediately available” to buy an 85 per cent stake in the club in 2011 but a jury took just two hours to find him not guilty.
Under Whyte’s stewardship, the Rangers business went into administration and then liquidation in 2012 after it failed to pay more than £10 million to HMRC in National Insurance and PAYE contributions.
Last year he dropped a £500,000 bid to sue the Crown Office for “malicious prosecution” over the case.
In 2014 the Insolvency Service banned Whyte from being a company director for the maximum of 15 years for his part in the financial troubles at Rangers.
In August 2020, the Daily Record told how we taped phone calls with Craig Whyte, who was passing himself off as his dad.
The company, which featured Tom as sole director, was struck off for dodgy dealings with a bounceback loan, ahead of Tom joining his son on the UK’s banned director list.
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