A LAND sale which sparked complaints to Europe that Scotland's biggest council had broken the law over favourable deals with Celtic FC actually saw the club pay three times over the market odds, it has emerged.

In a highly unusual move, Glasgow City Council has published details of the transaction with Celtic as well as the findings from independent evaluators.

It states that the plot of land on Glasgow's London Road had a market value of £200,000, less than a third of what the Scottish champions paid.

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The Westhhorn Recreation Ground, which Celtic previously used as a part of its training facilities, was sold to the club for £675,000 in 2009.

The deal sparked a wave of accusations that Celtic had received favourable treatment from the council at the expenses of footballing rivals, leading to allegations of 'State Aid' being made to the European Commission.

Despite being cleared of any wrong doing by Europe the council said it is still routinely swamped with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests about the deal, the original complaint alone costing the public purse almost £300,000.

In a statement posted on its website the council said it was also publishing the independent evaluation by property specialists Savills, as well as answers to frequently asked via FOI.

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It also published several pages detailing the chronology of the deal with Celtic but had redacted some names and financial information as they are commercially sensitive and a potential breach of data protection laws.

The council said: "The European Commission investigation concluded that there had been no unlawful State Aid given to the club by the council, while Audit Scotland concluded that a price in excess of market value had been obtained. The council achieved the best price possible for the site in question.

"In November 2013 the council commissioned an independent valuation of the site from an international real estate service company. This was done for the purposes of the European Commission investigation into the land sales. The report concluded that, in their opinion, the Market Value of Westthorn could be fairly stated as £200,000. "This figure is based both on benchmarking based on contemporaneous market evidence, less the significant abnormal ground condition costs at Westthorn."

It added: "The council has received a large number of requests under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 for information regarding the sale of the land to the club, the surveys and other reports on the condition and value of the site, and for documents submitted to the European Commission and Audit Scotland in relation to their respective investigations. "Given this continuing interest in this matter the council has decided to publish the material it holds on this topic."

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The statement also provides information on the land sold to Celtic, stating that parts of Westthorn are contaminated with chemicals, contains one mine entrance and is close to another , while the ground "is underlain with abandoned mine workings from coal seams at various depths". It claims decontamination of Westthorn would require removal of soil and capping, the mine entrance needing 'grouting' and with the site within the blast zone of a distillery and bonded warehouse large parts of the plot could not be used for residential development.

The Herald revealed in 2014 that the allegations the council broke the law in the historic deals cost taxpayers £280,000, with the hours spent responding to queries from the European Commission and dealing with Freedom Of Information requests from the public leaving the authority with the deficit.

The Commission did not take the complaint as far as opening a formal investigation.