DAVE KING has tonight hit back at David Somers’ claims he failed to prove he had the finance to invest in Rangers – and accused the Ibrox chairman of being "disingenuous".
Somers had earlier today insisted the South African-based businessman couldn’t provide proof of funds and that made it impossible for the board to accept King’s offer of investment last month.
A proposal from King's consortium was considered along with another from former Blue Knight Brian Kennedy before Ibrox directors instead accepted a £2million loan from shareholder Mike Ashley last month.
And
in an interview with Sky Sports News, Somers said: "We had three people
offering us funds and I felt it was very important we do proper due
diligence on all three.
"In the past Rangers has perhaps done deals it wouldn't have done if it had done proper due diligence.
"Where
(the King offer) fell down was really at stage one. When I said to all
three of these people 'would you show me proof of funds?' two showed me
proof of funds. The consortium did not.
"The second question for
the consortium was, 'I know there are eight of you, I only know three of
you. Can I please have the other five names?' And the message I was
getting all the time was 'if you agree to do deal, if you persuade 75
per cent of shareholders, then we'll show you funds and you can have the
other names'.
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"When I said to all three of these people 'would you show me
proof of funds?' two showed me proof of funds. The consortium did not.
"It
wasn't meeting the due diligence requirements – they were simple
questions. I cannot go to shareholders when I don't know all the names, I
can't check the names out and I can't put my hand on my heart and say,
'these guys have the money'.
"In the end we had to move on to stage two which left two providers.
"Then it was a simple case of which provider was offering the lowest interest rate – Mike Ashley
was offering zero interest which is difficult to beat – and which
provider wanted least security.
Again Mike Ashley only wanted a small
amount relative to the other deal.
"Once we got to that stage it was a no-brainer which one we were going with."
But
King has claimed Sandy Easdale - chairman of Rangers' football board -
agreed proof of funds and individual identities could be provided once
the backing of shareholders was confirmed.
He insisted Somers was "being disingenuous with his comments".
A
statement from King read: "We had private discussions with both (former
chief executive) Graham Wallace and Sandy Easdale in which we told them
that we would immediately provide proof of funding and details of the
full make-up of the consortium following confirmation from Sandy Easdale
that the shareholders whom he represents were prepared to support the
terms of our investment proposal in principle.
"Sandy Easdale
agreed to proceed on this basis. Unfortunately he was not then able to
provide the confirmation we asked for. There was no possibility of
proceeding any further without the support of Sandy Easdale's group who
had the power to block our proposed investment."