Aviva Premiership: something exciting happens

[artaneboy]

Munster have a better claim on 2017 than Clermont do.

Well that clinches it. No re-assignation...


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[Dave Cahill]

[ronk]

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-how ... s-11915269

So the panel said it wasn't deliberate and relegation would be excessive. The other clubs didn't agree.

Also the amounts are much smaller than the rumours.

The other clubs had titles, playoffs and freedom from relegation on their minds.
Witch-hunt.

And they shared the fine.

[Morf]

Is the forthcoming tougher JIFF regulations making French owners/administrators a lot more mouthy about calling for someone to please think of the children when it comes to salary caps and especially Saracens?

[MylesNaGapoleen]

https://news.sky.com/story/revealed-how ... s-11915269

The headline breaches are Very underwhelming! Are the co-investments included in those breach figures I wonder?

Something's not right with this.

It sounds like a complete bungfest and right to be fined & penalised points but why would they refuse a full audit, opt for relegation instead and destroy the club?

It is no wonder other clubs are livid.

[locho]

Something's not right with this.

It sounds like a complete bungfest and right to be fined & penalised points but why would they refuse a full audit, opt for relegation instead and destroy the club?

It is no wonder other clubs are livid.

That's the most confusing, if as they've been saying all along that they've done nothing deliberate and it was an admin error and these headline numbers are true, then why wouldn't they open the books?? I don't buy the Brendan Venter line that it was to protect the playing squad. Perhaps it could be to do with this year, the fact that they felt it impossible to get under the cap this year probably means they were significantly more over than the £0.9 million from last year.

[FLIP]

Something's not right with this.

It sounds like a complete bungfest and right to be fined & penalised points but why would they refuse a full audit, opt for relegation instead and destroy the club?

It is no wonder other clubs are livid.

That's the most confusing, if as they've been saying all along that they've done nothing deliberate and it was an admin error and these headline numbers are true, then why wouldn't they open the books?? I don't buy the Brendan Venter line that it was to protect the playing squad. Perhaps it could be to do with this year, the fact that they felt it impossible to get under the cap this year probably means they were significantly more over than the £0.9 million from last year.

Isn't the refusal to audit more linked with the automatic removal of titles?

[MylesNaGapoleen]

Something's not right with this.

It sounds like a complete bungfest and right to be fined & penalised points but why would they refuse a full audit, opt for relegation instead and destroy the club?

It is no wonder other clubs are livid.

That's the most confusing, if as they've been saying all along that they've done nothing deliberate and it was an admin error and these headline numbers are true, then why wouldn't they open the books?? I don't buy the Brendan Venter line that it was to protect the playing squad. Perhaps it could be to do with this year, the fact that they felt it impossible to get under the cap this year probably means they were significantly more over than the £0.9 million from last year.

Isn't the refusal to audit more linked with the automatic removal of titles?

you could be right.
there is a graudian article that completely slates the idea the success had nothing to do with the deep pockets and flashing the cash:
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/ ... relegation
In essence it rubbishes the sarries argument that they did nothing wrong and achieved success because there was a creche beside the training ground and had a "positive" approach.

I doubt this reveal of the PRL report is the end of it. I guess an audit looks inevitable now. Regardless of their relegation status. HMRC might jump in to have a look too...not unlike how the glasgow rangers setup flagged them up to HMRC and everything unravelled.

Lots of "company loans" raises a red flag with them.

[ribs]

I agree that this looks like an attempt to stop further investigation. Wonder what else Wray was up to outside of rugby that might be unearthed by a full Hmrc audit... Political will might play a part here.

[FLIP]

I agree that this looks like an attempt to stop further investigation. Wonder what else Wray was up to outside of rugby that might be unearthed by a full Hmrc audit... Political will might play a part here.

Again, HRMC don't need any particular reason to undertake an audit of any UK business beyond any possible suspicion of tax not being paid properly.

[MylesNaGapoleen]

I agree that this looks like an attempt to stop further investigation. Wonder what else Wray was up to outside of rugby that might be unearthed by a full Hmrc audit... Political will might play a part here.

Again, HRMC don't need any particular reason to undertake an audit of any UK business beyond any possible suspicion of tax not being paid properly.

not disagreeing with you but there is a lot of "company loans" mentioned as a method of bunging £10s of thousands to players..that was likely done via the limited companies Wray setup with the players named in the report.....farrell, itoje, the vinupolas and chris ashton.
in other words, HMRC would start with those companies and work their way back to the saracens company. They have a few years of company reports to work with Saracens.

"that money was just resting in my account" won't wash with those lads.

[kermischocolate]

Full report :
https://media-cdn.incrowdsports.com/fa0 ... a67de6.pdf

[Oldschool]

Presumably HRMC take a more particular interest when they see words like foreign or offshore in reference to incomes or investments or remuneration or packages or......being used.
You'd imagine that they have some fairly nasty (forensic if you prefer) software for sussing out ??? "Stuff" that's the word I was looking for.
Like for example how would an accountant look at one club's books compared to another club's books or group of club's and discern fairly quickly whether or not they're either kocher or not.
Obviously the detail might take a bit longer.
Perhaps too, if the answer is pretty obvious, then why didn't the proverbial hit the fan sooner.
Was it (think this has been mentioned before) simply a case of the emperor having no close.

[The Doc]

Presumably HRMC take a more particular interest when they see words like foreign or offshore in reference to incomes or investments or remuneration or packages or......being used.
You'd imagine that they have some fairly nasty (forensic if you prefer) software for sussing out ??? "Stuff" that's the word I was looking for.
Like for example how would an accountant look at one club's books compared to another club's books or group of club's and discern fairly quickly whether or not they're either kocher or not.
Obviously the detail might take a bit longer.
Perhaps too, if the answer is pretty obvious, then why didn't the proverbial hit the fan sooner.
Was it (think this has been mentioned before) simply a case of the emperor having no close.

HMRC don't really care about PRL rules. The only thing they will care about is if there is a benefit passed from one person to another which wasn't declared as income or a gift (and therefore evading tax due). Anybody can give anybody else a loan - that's not a revenue question. Potentially giving an interest free loan generates a declareable event in terms of the potential interest saved. But a Director can loan a company money without tax implications - and in any case, even if there was some benefit, if teh company declared it in it's accounts, it would all be fine from a revenue point of view.

If someone was paid for something they didn't do - which might be quesstionable for PRL rules - as long as the player declared the income there wouldn't be a tax problem (and it wouldn't be visible to PRL). But if someone was paid over the odds for an asset (e.g. image rights), that might interest HMRC.

[FLIP]

Presumably HRMC take a more particular interest when they see words like foreign or offshore in reference to incomes or investments or remuneration or packages or......being used.
You'd imagine that they have some fairly nasty (forensic if you prefer) software for sussing out ??? "Stuff" that's the word I was looking for.
Like for example how would an accountant look at one club's books compared to another club's books or group of club's and discern fairly quickly whether or not they're either kocher or not.
Obviously the detail might take a bit longer.
Perhaps too, if the answer is pretty obvious, then why didn't the proverbial hit the fan sooner.
Was it (think this has been mentioned before) simply a case of the emperor having no close.

HMRC don't really care about PRL rules. The only thing they will care about is if there is a benefit passed from one person to another which wasn't declared as income or a gift (and therefore evading tax due). Anybody can give anybody else a loan - that's not a revenue question. Potentially giving an interest free loan generates a declareable event in terms of the potential interest saved. But a Director can loan a company money without tax implications - and in any case, even if there was some benefit, if teh company declared it in it's accounts, it would all be fine from a revenue point of view.

If someone was paid for something they didn't do - which might be quesstionable for PRL rules - as long as the player declared the income there wouldn't be a tax problem (and it wouldn't be visible to PRL). But if someone was paid over the odds for an asset (e.g. image rights), that might interest HMRC.

All such information like that should and would be in the accounts passed to Companies House in the UK - of which HMRC has full access. False accounting would be exposed by a full audit but false accounting is a full on black area criminal illegality, whereas creative tax planning that skirts the line between avoidance and evasion is generally treated more as an underpayment of tax which requires payment in 30 days of notice. Any accountant who wants to keep their qualifications and accreditation would never put their client in a position where they would be done for false accounting.

[paddyor]

A refrain I keep hearing is 'the players have done nothing wrong.' That doesn't stand up to even a minute's thought.

To believe that you have to believe that Saracens players;

- Were convinced to set up their investment companies and accept money that way, or via a vineyard in South Africa or whatever other backdoor routes were used, rather than just receiving a salary like a normal person AND

- That they looked around the dressing room and saw an agglomeration of talent that no other Premiership club could come close to matching even while reaching the limits of the salary cap AND

- That for some reason their club didn't want to deal with agents

and with those factors in mind they never averted to the likelihood that the rules were being broken. That's not credible. The kindest interpretation is that they were wilfully deceiving themselves.

I'm not saying they carry the primary culpability here. Im not saying they should carry personal suspensions or anything like that. I'm just saying that 'they did nothing wrong' stretches credibility beyond breaking point. There's no way they didn't know something was wrong. If they didn't know it's because they didn't want to and avoided finding out. That's 'doing something wrong.'

Put another way; we all knew.

I don't disagree with you, but part of me thinks "so what?". They've a short career and they negotiate for themselves, yes they may have deluded themselves, but they didn't break any rules. There is no individual player salary limit and I don't doubt many of the players asked was it ok and believed those payments may not have fallen under the salcap reg.

As a matter of interest, do the clubs have to declare who are their two marquee players? If so who are they at Sarries and what do they earn?

Apparently part of how they got caught was “blabbing” to team mates in England camp about the arrangements they had.

[ribs]

There look like related party transactions that should have been disclosed as connected (due to the people involved). However, they were probably off book and contained in other companies so this is where hmrc will be interested. No mention of overseas transactions (e.g in South Africa) so lots more might be out there.
Bear in mind that only provable transactions and facts could have been submitted by the investigator - there are probably many others where the documentation discovered wasn’t enough so investigators just had to get over the 350k wiggle room to win their case.

[XyzFoo]

London Irish just beat the Saints in the Gardens. They could just play with freedom as the great fear of relegation has been removed.

[blockhead]

London Irish just beat the Saints in the Gardens. They could just play with freedom as the great fear of relegation has been removed.

Would they, could they close the door behind them at the end of the season and say goodbye to relegation/promotion?
Saracens go back to amateur, they have the stadium for it.
Talk about a cautionary tale.

[MylesNaGapoleen]

London Irish just beat the Saints in the Gardens. They could just play with freedom as the great fear of relegation has been removed.

Would they, could they close the door behind them at the end of the season and say goodbye to relegation/promotion?
Saracens go back to amateur, they have the stadium for it.
Talk about a cautionary tale.

haha!
re: stadiums. They got a £20m low interest loan from barnet council last year (iirc) to help rebuild/improve the allianze. They are also signed up for 4 years to play big games at tottenham hotspurs new stadium!!! Make it up, you couldn't.

I pass through St Albans in hertfordshire often and the atmosphere there with fans is not good. I don't think many will travel for the dublin tie in the HC. Now they know the players were in cahoots with the cashfest.....and the "we didn't do anything wrong..everyone is at it" claim has been shattered, they are on the wrong side of livid with both club and a few players. Some have already bought season tickets for next year...and have been told, no refunds. Season tickets aren't cheap there. That said, saracens* don't have a huge fanbase so I guess championship stadia might suit them when all the sunshine supporters drift off.