Scott1 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 29, 2020 10:14 am
I have no idea about the legal side of things but why were they given the option of having their books open,why couldnt they be forced?
Under the regulations that every club agreed to, the books of every club are to be audited every season. The scope of the audit is down to the SCM and the Accountants and the clubs are obliged to make everything available. i don't know how thorough this was but I suspect not very. To do a thorough audit in depth for every club would not be cheap and I don't know what the SCM's budget is (did his department get any of the £5.36m).
I understand that Saracen's argument was that they were being victimised and that any in depth scrutiny of them should also apply to every other club. Not only would that be expensive but I suspect not every other club would be enthusiastic about that - I'm sure there would be a lot of mud to be thrown, even if most of it was a bit watery. A court case to enforce the full audit against Saracens may well have decided that, in the interests of fairness it had to be done to everybody. Not everybody wanted that.
I am neither clever enough to understand nor stupid enough to play this game
Presumably because the league either don’t have the powers to force clubs to disclose detailed accounts and would have no legal power to force sponsors or sugar daddies to open their accounts. There are returns that are in the public domain but they don’t tend to detail salaries and so on. The Inland Revenue can demand detail but they are backed by statutory legal powers.
In much the same way the league can not inspect my personal accounts or yours for that matter.
Any rights to inspect are civil contractual agreements between club and league. If the club says no, there is probably little the league can do other than assign punishments.
How far the league can go in terms of inspecting the books of sides seeking promotion may be limited.
Compensation or severance payments to existing players to terminate existing contracts could easily be “lost” and new contracts that comply with the cap sign for the 20/21 season and beyond. Those payments could easily be inflated to make a lower salary for 3 years or so work out quite nicely.
Again, if you have deep enough pockets or willing sponsors, these things are possible to work through.
If you have a rich benefactor the loss of income from sponsors, TV and gate money is less of a hit. If you are being relegated anyway those losses are happening anyway but if your benefactor sticks with you you can bounce back with a powerful team.
Release a few players to seem to play the game. Keep your key players.
It’s perhaps easier for established stars to handle a season own a league fewer games at a less intense level may be quite a good thing for your international performance. For those players seeking to become internationals the pay has to be pretty good to justify a season in lower tier rugby and a further year without top level European competition where you get the spotlight to push for selection.
Forget Nigel Wray and his coterie of grovelling crumb picking relatives and friends'. It's just incredible that people who have credible reputations are prepared to sit at the same table as other Directors (who are known to have corrupted the competition), as a consequence of which their own honest intentions to reform Saracens may actually be corrupted or will at least be perceived to have been corrupted.
If you need to 'be seen to be whiter than white' (not my words but the words of the current CEO post the interim appearance of Edward 'briefcase' Griffiths) then you should be seen to be whiter than white. One way not to be seen to be whiter than white is to put on the Board of Directors an individual(s) who paid appearance money to an employee of the company who did not attend the event, in order to circumvent the competition rules.
This is precisely where I smell a great big rat. Their books SHOULD have been examined, in order to to find the whole truth, one way or the other. The stench will never be completely eradicated.
Dangerous4 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:26 pm
This is precisely where I smell a great big rat. Their books SHOULD have been examined, in order to to find the whole truth, one way or the other. The stench will never be completely eradicated.
What do you think would have been found in the 'books'?
A line marked 'cash withdrawal' for £2 million followed by a row of initials splitting up the amounts?
Have you never heard of the term 'off the books'?
The breaches seem to be characterised by indirect dubious business partnerships and overpayments by third parties.
On the other hand, why were Saracens so reluctant to open their books? I struggle to believe they would be so incompetent as to have the above mentioned transaction highlighted in bold. I think their point of opening their books only if everybody else did was to sling some mud and suggest, probably with accuracy, that they were not the only team with something to hide.
I am neither clever enough to understand nor stupid enough to play this game
Dangerous4 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:26 pm
This is precisely where I smell a great big rat. Their books SHOULD have been examined, in order to to find the whole truth, one way or the other. The stench will never be completely eradicated.
What do you think would have been found in the 'books'?
A line marked 'cash withdrawal' for £2 million followed by a row of initials splitting up the amounts?
Have you never heard of the term 'off the books'?
The breaches seem to be characterised by indirect dubious business partnerships and overpayments by third parties.
On the other hand, why were Saracens so reluctant to open their books? I struggle to believe they would be so incompetent as to have the above mentioned transaction highlighted in bold. I think their point of opening their books only if everybody else did was to sling some mud and suggest, probably with accuracy, that they were not the only team with something to hide.
Their reluctance to open their books may well stem from the certainty that the trail of cheating goes back a lot further than 2015 and that the very foundation of their recent success was built on a charade, also the Nelson type blindness that seems to have affected the squad and the coaches while all this money was sloshing about may have been illuminated in an unflattering way, the mud slinging was just that, I am sure if they had anything on another team the Sarrie's friendly media would have been fed it pretty quickly.
