THE scandal of the taxpayer-funded payouts to the former administrators and directors of Rangers FC took another twist yesterday.

A Court of Session judge ruled that administrator David Grier had been wrongly prosecuted, opening the way for a massive claim for damages against the Crown Office. 

Although a further hearing will be required to determine whether Grier was maliciously prosecuted like his colleagues David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, all three of them employed insolvency experts at Duff and Phelps, Lord Tyre’s verdict against the Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC left little doubt about the wrong nature of the prosecution.

“There was no case fit to be put into court,” Lord Tyre wrote in his judgement. “I accordingly hold that there is no relevant defence pled to the pursuer’s (Grier’s) case that the prosecution was initiated and continued in the absence of reasonable and probable cause.”

Lord Tyre said the case would now proceed to a hearing when “the pursuer will require to prove malice before his claim for damages can succeed”.

Grier is confident he will succeed and released the following statement after the court judgement: “I welcome Lord Tyre’s clear and comprehensive judgement. He has confirmed what I have known from the very beginning – that there was never a proper basis to prosecute me.”

He added: “I cannot understand why it has been claimed otherwise, causing considerable delay and expense.”

His public relations team stated: “Like his Duff and Phelps colleagues David Whitehouse and Paul Clark, David Grier was detained by police at his home in England in November 2014, taken to Glasgow, held in custody for several days, wrongly accused of serious crimes, and prosecuted over the course of a year and a half.  Like his colleagues, he suffered enormous reputational and career damage before all charges against him were finally thrown out by the courts.

“Unlike his colleagues, the Crown continued to insist it had been right to prosecute him.  Now a senior judge has rejected that claim.”

Grier, Whitehouse and Clark were all charged with fraud in relation to their dealings as administrators after the club collapsed into administration in 2012. The National revealed last month that Whitehouse and Clark were paid £24 million in damages and legal expenses, with Wolffe confirming that sum and apologising to both men and the Scottish Parliament last week.

Lord Tyre’s judgement touched on the question of why the charges were eventually ruled irrelevant. 

He wrote: “Where, as here, the charges were dismissed as irrelevant, it seems to me that it will normally be difficult to argue that reasonable and probable cause existed from an objective standpoint. 

“A decision that a charge is irrelevant is a decision that even if the Crown were to prove all of the facts narrated in the indictment, the essentials of the criminal charge are not present. 

“As a general rule, it can hardly be said, on an objective assessment, that there is reasonable and probable cause for initiating and continuing proceedings if a conviction cannot result because the circumstances averred do not, as a matter of law, amount to commission of the offence charged.”