SPFL: Dundee 'not offered sweetener' in season-ending vote

The SPFL has denied offering Dundee “anything as a sweetener” to change their vote on ending the lower-league season.

In a lengthy Q&A document, the league body said “the restructuring process that is happening now” had been committed to in a document sent to members on April 8 – two days before an initial voting deadline on Good Friday.

“At no stage was any additional commitment or ‘sweetener’ given to any club before it voted,” the SPFL said.

An open letter, signed by SPFL chairman Murdoch MacLennan, branded another independent investigation – separate to the one completed by Deloitte – “wholly unnecessary, inappropriate and contrary to the interests of the company.”

Rangers previously claimed, on April 11, to have been given evidence from a whistleblower which they said raises serious concerns surrounding the vote.

However, Mr MacLennan said: “You are now being invited, by each of them, to commit the SPFL Limited to uncapped expenditure on an investigation, without defined boundaries, into the SPFL Board and its executive team, as well as a range of matters related to a resolution which achieved a 80% plus agreed return.

“All at a time when we have had no detail or evidence whatsoever of what it is the directors, appointed by you, and our senior employees are alleged to have done ‘wrong’.”

The Q&A papers also said “care should be taken” to consider the motives of clubs calling for another investigation.

Various other key points raised in the open letter and Q&A include:

Deloitte was “given full and unfettered access” to SPFL’s systems and records in investigation, who found no evidence of “improper behaviour or impropriety”

Suggestion of issuing loans described “a red herring”

Board should not have asked for response by Good Friday but had they waited much longer, they judged some clubs would “face a financial crisis and start to go under”