The shamed MP travelled north for glamour midweek games in Glasgow, telling Parliamentary bosses that he had vital meetings to attend.
Former office manager Marion Kinley said: "Devine would fly up for Celtic midweek matches between 2006 and 2008.
"He would come up on Wednesday and fly back on the Thursday morning.
"MPs should have been at Westminster so Devine would make up an excuse that he had constituency business or kid on he was going to a funeral.
"And during the parliamentary recess, he would make an excuse to fly to London so that he could get a cheaper flight to go away on holiday."
Devine also made sure his staff did not benefit from the cash he was claiming on their behalf.
While he claimed £250 a month in expenses for petty cash for the office, he was so mean he didn't pay for tea and coffee for the staff.
Devine - who has a 2000 conviction for drink-driving - also claimed more than £10,000 in mileage while Marion was acting as his chauffeur. But he handed her just £60.
Marion, 47, said: "When I first started working for him, it was during recess. I would be driving him almost seven days a week, taking him to gala days at the weekend.
"The procedure was for mileage claims to be paid in MPs' accounts and they signed a form agreeing to pay the money to the person whose car it was.
"He was claiming hundreds of pounds a month for mileage and all I ever received was £60 for petrol.
"I think he saw me driving him about - and the costs I incurred - as part of my duties.
"The money went straight into the account and I never saw the money.
"I would tell him my car didn't run on fresh air and he would say, 'F*** off, I pay you enough'."
In March 2008, Devine persuaded a friend to call Marion pretending to be a freelance journalist looking into MPs' expenses. She is still bemused as to the reasons for the hoax.
Devine did not even try to cover his tracks and Marion discovered an email he had sent to the woman to set up the ruse.
Marion, who as office manager had access to the email account, went into an immediate state of shock and took time off for stress.
She said: "To this day, I can't understand why he did that. Maybe it was to avoid giving me a wage rise."
In her absence, Devine made up a series of lies about her. She said: "He told the rest of the office staff that I was being investigated by the police for making fraudulent claims.
"The office staff were embarrassed because they knew I was off work with stress. He then told people that I had a gambling addiction.
"But my colleagues knew I have only had a bet on the Grand National.
"I think he saw me as a female version of him."
Marion tried to return to work in October 2008 but Devine suspended her over allegations she had made false claims. She eventually quit in May 2009.
She also believes that her being on sick leave may have led Devine to claiming thousands of pounds in fraudulent expenses.
She said: "When I was off sick, he was not able to claim the miles I drove. That income stopped for him.
"He was down £300 or £400 a month and had to get the money from somewhere."
Marion won her fight to prove she had been unfairly dismissed by Devine last October and is still trying to get the £35,000 she was awarded against him.
Meanwhile, Devine will be sentenced in a month after being found guilty last week of two charges of false accounting. He could face a prison term of up to seven years.
Marion said last night: "I take no great pleasure from him facing jail. But he has got himself into this situation.
"It is incredible that a man of his age could be so stupid and arrogant."
Devine was found guilty of a charge that he got somebody else to complete three invoices from a cleaning company for £360, £360 and £2160.
The receipts, which he copied from one original blank invoice, were submitted by Devine to the Parliamentary authorities between 2008 and 2009.
The jury also found him guilty of asking printing company Armstrong to mark two invoices "received with thanks", to indicate he had paid for orders.
However, he never handed over any cash for the two ghost orders, worth £2400 and £3105.
Instead, Devine pocketed the money after submitting the receipts to the fees office between March and April 2009.
The jury cleared him of a third charge relating to £360 that he sought to pay a cleaner.
During the trial, Devine attempted to evade justice by blaming Marion.
He even accused her of forging his signature to pay herself a bonus of £5000.
She said: "I feel a tiny bit of sympathy. But if he had his way, it would have been me standing in that dock.
"He would have seen me go to prison to save his own skin. I have to think that he got what he deserved."
Disgraced MP could lose home
Shamed Jim Devine faces a bankruptcy order that could see him lose his home.
Marion Kinley has applied for a sequestration order after he failed to pay money awarded to her for unfair dismissal.
An employment tribunal awarded her £35,000 last October for breach of contract and unfair dismissal after Devine "bullied and harassed" her.
But Devine failed to pay the money.
Marion could have moved to have Devine sequestrated but rejected that idea because she didn't want to see him lose his house.
But she failed to have his £30,000 House of Commons "golden goodbye" pay-off seized by bailiffs.
It had been frozen pending the outcome of Devine and other MPs' trials.
The sequestration order hearing is to be heard later this month.
Marion said: "It is my only option left. I have exhausted all other avenues."
Meanwhile, a decision on whether Devine should keep his "golden goodbye" could be made by MPs tomorrow.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/sc...6908-22920461/
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IF YOU KNOW THEIR HISTORY INVESTIGATES
Jim Devine was one of the MP's behind the disturbing and vile campaign to have Jock Stein awarded posthumous knighthood.
Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); 11/7/1998; McILWRAITH, GORDON
JOCK Stein and the Celtic board covered up allegations made against Boys' Club founder Jim Torbett,
Mr Birt said: "There was a lot of hearsay and it wasn't until Jim came back that I got involved because things started up again."
He told how he took the allegations against Torbett to the Celtic board and Stein and even told the then vice-chairman, Kevin Kelly, about them at a meeting in his car.
He said: "Although there were people who spoke to me I couldn't go to the police without actual proof of the allegations. When I joined as chairman, I was told by Jock Stein to keep the name of Celtic Football Club clean at all times."
THE OTHER SIDE OF PARADISE
Scotland on Sunday 18/08/1996
Celtic Boys' Club appealed to the dreams of a generation of football hopefuls, but they have only made the tabloids in a seamy tale of manipulation and abuse, report AUDREY GILLAN and RON McKAY
IT ALL begins in a shrine, the walls adorned with artefacts and relics, all carefully arranged and devoutly displayed, past which the faithful shuffled and nourished their own dreams of immortality.
Here, paradise seemed tangible, just a short trip away. But the changing faces who gaped in awe at this display of devotion were gullible young boys who worshipped a team. They stared at the display of shirts and photographs, testimonials and autographs and believed the man who told them that they could look down from the window, across the city to the football ground in the East End and take all that lay before them.
Jim Torbett was 20 when he set up Celtic Boys' Club in 1966, seeking permission from the then manager Jock Stein to use the team's name. He was only a few years older than the lads who trooped through his living room. Boys who left believing, as he did, in dreams, certain that they were special, marked out for fame. Now 30 years on, those dreams have become nightmares for some, grown men marked forever by the shy but enthusiastic man who took them to the heights and then the depths.
John McCluskey is, in the unimpeachable judgment of former Celtic star Charlie Nicholas, the best young player he ever saw. Last week, McCluskey -who has fought drink, addiction and his own demons - was sitting in an upmarket Glasgow hotel, sipping cappuccino and waiting to make a statement to police that Torbett had sexually assaulted him. He had been so badly affected by the Dunblane massacre, he said, that he felt he had to make a stand.
Just two days before, the Daily Record had spread across five pages allegations that the boys' club founder had abused him. His allegation was supported by Ally Brazil, the former Ipswich and Spurs striker, another graduate of the Celtic academy, who claimed that Torbett kissed and fondled him when he was only 14. Within hours of the story hitting the streets, and the newspaper setting up its abuse hotline, dozens of calls had come in and another man - Frank Cairney, the man who had been brought in by Jock Stein to get rid of the smears and innuendoes which for years had hung around the boys' club - was also being named as an abuser.
Whispers that something was not quite right with Celtic Boys' Club had been around since its inception. Some boys passed through the
ranks unscathed, ducking slaps on the bum and over-enthusiastic spongings when they lay injured on the pitch. But others are alleged
to have suffered at the hands of a man who abused his position in pursuit of paedophile perversions. It seemed some of the weaker boys, those with less skill, less certain of a place on the first team, those with less parental guidance, became easy prey. They would be enticed back to Torbett's house with promises of meals and ice cream and sometimes less innocent pursuits would follow.
When Fergus McCann finally arrived in the halo of television lights at Parkhead in 1994 he knew that he faced a formidable task: rebuilding a stadium, a team and the belief of a support which had seen years of failed promises and dismal performance. What he did not expect -by way of an anonymous letter sent to him almost as soon as he was through the door - was a disturbing report of years of abuse at the boys' club. Officially, the club was entirely separate from Celtic but McCann appreciated that it was inextricably bound to Parkhead in the minds of the public, and indeed in the hearts of some of the players and former players - like Peter Grant, Paul McStay
and Tommy Burns - who had graduated from it to the big time of professional football.
McCann quickly went about trying to establish the truth, or not, of the accusations. He called in Jim Torbett and asked him to meet Celtic's lawyers and confirm or deny, in an affidavit which could be passed to the police, the accusations. Torbett repeatedly refused.
He asked Ally Brazil and John McCluskey to make their allegations formal. Brazil refused at that stage. McCluskey agreed, but only if his statement was not passed to the police.
Ironically, McCann was playing out, more than three years on, a sad little tableau which had occurred at Parkhead under the old regime, ruled over by the Kelly and White families. In 1991 the boys' club had been to Kearney, New Jersey - an annual tour to the Irish part of the state with players staying at the homes of Catholic families -and one boy, no longer at Celtic but now a professional player in Scotland, had alleged to his hosts and to his own family that he had been assaulted by the team's general manager, Frank Cairney.
The boy's father took him to Celtic Park to have it out with Liam Brady who was then only months in the job as team manager. The club's chief scout John Kelman was also present.
It was Brady's first serious and most affecting problem in a troubled time at Parkhead which did not last long. He listened to the boy, believed him, and insisted to the board that Cairney had to be removed, not only from the boys' club but from any association with the main football club. So, overnight, the man who was used to having his run of the place and the ear of the management, was cast out.
It was agreed, by Brady, the boy and his parents and the then Celtic board, that the police would not be informed. The young player was assured that the alleged incident would have no effect on his future career at the club. However, signed statements were taken by Celtic's lawyers from the four adults who had been on the New Jersey trip. All were sworn to silence.Cairney was now away from the football club and its nursery - business commitments was the given reason - but Jim Torbett was backplaying a major role, first as a fund-raiser then back with the boys' club. Torbett had maintained his connections with Celtic. Pre-McCann board member Kevin Kelly, still honorary president of the boys' club, is a fellow director of Torbett's company The Trophy Centre, and current board member Jack McGinn is an employee.
It is not clear why a man widely regarded as a child abuser was allowed back into a position of responsibility at the boys' club. Torbett had been kicked out in 1976 after being confronted by the committee and, according to Frank Cairney's account of the meeting, had broken down in tears and confessed. He was then summoned to a meeting with Jock Stein, at the end of which the big man physically kicked him out of the door. And just to ensure that the boys' club stayed clean the legendary Celtic manager brought in another man, Hugh Birt, as chairman of its committee.
Birt claims he was concerned about the behaviour of both Cairney and Torbett - who wheedled his way back in after Stein's death - and raised the matter with the club. Before he knew it Birt was asked to resign. When he stood his ground and refused, he says, Celtic withdrew his ticket to the directors' box and he had no option but to get out.
In spite of all these troubles, the boys' club, from humble beginnings in a hall in Maryhill, had become a great success and was now seen as a crucial feeder of players for the senior club. It used Celtic's training ground at Barrowfield for coaching and matches and became one of the country's most successful nurseries: its more famous graduates include current manager Tommy Burns, George McCluskey, Roy Aitken, Charlie Nicholas, Paul McStay, and of the present side Peter Grant and Simon Donnelly.
But although the boys' club was hugely successful, rumours still continued to surround it. Former players began to talk to the press, although none would go on record or make a formal complaint to the police. The New Jersey incident in 1991 was successfully managed by the club and it seemed that nothing tangible would ever be proved. And then, in 1994, the new regime swept into Celtic Park and the rumours flared up again. This time, the chairman was determined that nothing should be kicked under the carpet.
As McCann's investigation got under way, a lone Celtic fanatic Gerry McSherry, who resented the arrival of the new board, appeared
on a radio programme to question the transfer of a young player. Within days he had received a number of calls suggesting untoward behaviour in the boys club. After months of investigation, McSherry began touting what he called the Paedo Files round various newspapers and television companies and claims now to be under contract to the Record.
Last week, as the story developed from allegations against Torbett - who was suspended from the boys' club six days ago - to claims that Cairney fondled boys as they sat in the front seat of his car, many men with long associations with the club began to grow uneasy.
Former players backed Big Frank whom they knew as a "father figure" and Burns rushed out to Cairney's terraced home in Viewpark, Lanarkshire, after receiving a call from the man he considers a close friend. Leaving his house the manager was reported to have said: "He [Cairney] has the whole of my backing and that of Celtic Football Club to a man."
The following morning Burns must have been wishing he had bitten his tongue. Incandescent at his manager's assumption that the club would back Cairney, McCann issued a statement. "While I sympathise with Tommy Burns' personal position as a friend of Mr Cairney, the club cannot condone or defend or take sides in a matter which involves a criminal complaint," he said.
Burns himself claimed that he had been misquoted and what he had in fact said was: "He has my backing and I'm sure he will have the backing of several members of the first team who played for Frank at under-16 level."
Meanwhile, the allegations against Torbett went unchallenged. After hiding out at the east end home of William and Andrew Gilbert - two young men who had played for the boys' club - he is said to have left the country. Yesterday, their mother Susan said that Torbett was a close family friend - they sometimes travelled abroad with him and the boys' club - and that the allegations made against him were rubbish.
DCI John Boyd at London Road police station, who has four officers investigating the allegations, said that his team had been taking calls from a number of people who had not gone through the Daily Record. He added that the inquiry was at an early stage and that no arrests were imminent.
At Celtic Park, the management is trying to keep its head down and stop the scandal interfering with play. Footballers like Peter Grant and Tosh McKinlay - who came through the boys' club route - have nothing to say on the record. And the boy who made the complaint against Cairney? He's playing his cards close to his chest. The chants from the terraces and jibes from his opponents would no doubt be too much to take.
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