As the statement is on RW's own Twitter account it should I think be treated as genuine but more so because of info it contains which is not generally known. A few observations.
First, I have pointed out before that, whatever the reason for the administration or who was involved, it is a fact that you cannot simultaneously put a company into administration and effect a pre-pack. Pre-packs can be set up reasonably quickly but not instantaneously. It is not chicken and egg, first the details and mechanics and fine print of the pre-pack are agreed upon and drawn up, then and only then is the administration and simultaneous sale effected.
However quickly it is done, it follows that the pre-pack outcome is of necessity known and drawn up BEFORE the step of administration is taken. In this case the administration was as a result of the debenture holder appointing an administrator so the buyers must have had contact with and set up the deal with the administrator before he became the administrator. Make of that what you will.
RW says the pre-pack / administration was to get rid of Omar's debt, and was put together, "with the RFL's full backing and knowledge", since Dec 2013.
The statement also provides confirmation of what I reported some months back I had been told, namely that the RFL were involved in the situation whereby the agreed price for OK's shares was not then paid (RW says "Rimmer has publicly said that Moore didn't pay OK.... What he didn't add was that
Blake Solly advised Moore not to pay". I heard this from independent sources and this remark convinces me the statement is genuine as who else would know about that except someone very close to Moore and the deal?
I have previously said that a deal was done to sell OK's shares but then the purchasers declined to pay the agreed price. RW refers to the "agreed amount" and the deal with OK for time to pay, which OK agreed, and then confirms that RW's "fellow directors .... thought they could legally and I guess morally just not pay what was contractually owed". People have speculated that the reason the agreed price was not paid might be because suddenly the purchasers found out about hidden costs but RW confirms that "hidden costs which they knew nothing about are just stories, all of them had access to full documents and accounting systems". It would indeed be odd if having been around for months, they didn't.
It is interesting that RW contradicts what he says the administrator claimed at the creditors meeting, by alleging that not only was he (RW) not contacted by the administrator, but also the administrator has never responded to RW's "numerous emails". It may be recalled that I pointed out the administrator had not contacted OK either, which was why OK called for a creditors meeting which was not otherwise going to take place. I am surprised that we don't have a report from anyone as to what went on at that meeting.
One recurring factor in the numerous accounts and reports from several parties that have been at the heart of this farrago is a number of serious allegations about the conduct of the RFL, and certainly RW's statement adds to those, but he is not the first by any means. It might be interesting to see what happens about RW's statement, but I won't be surprised if the RFL will just largely ignore it or sweep it under the voluminous Red Hall carpets, which you could be forgiven for thinking must rise several feet in the air by now.
This sorry saga is more Machiavellian than anything the scriptwriters of Dallas ever came up with. We can only hope that we get out of the shower one morning and find out it was all in fact just one bad dream.
