Saracens are being probed by rival club
They hire firm to investigate offshore accounts due to lack of confidence in Premiership Rugby
ONE of Saracens’ Premiership rivals has hired forensic accountants to investigate the club, with a particular focus on overseas assets and tax havens.
Following Sportsmail revelations about the business and property arrangements that Saracens owner Nigel Wray has with his star players — including England captain Owen Farrell — it has emerged that a lack of confidence in Premiership Rugby’s ability to police the £7million salary cap has prompted at least one club to take matters into their own hands.
Sportsmail understands they have sought professional help examining Saracens’ finances, in a bid to check whether the all-conquering club is complying with the salary cap regulations.
It is understood that the potential use of offshore accounts by Saracens is one of the main areas being investigated.
Since Sportsmail’s expose of Wray’s businesses with Farrell, Mako and Billy Vunipola and Richard Wigglesworth and property arrangements with former players, sources have come forward with information about the outcome of the salary cap review into Saracens in 2015. It has been claimed that representatives of four clubs pushed for ‘proper punishment’ but the remaining clubs voted them down. The case was closed with an out-of-court settlement.
Yesterday, Saracens director of rugby Mark McCall refused to be drawn on the subject, repeatedly referring to the statement that the club had issued on Monday evening, which said the club complies with the salary cap.
When asked if he is confident the club is operating within the rules, he replied: ‘The club issued a statement which I fully agree with, I have got nothing further to add to what the statement said.’
He said the club had not spoken to players and staff about the reports and the matter had not been raised during training ahead of Saracens’s match against Bath on Friday.
Premiership Rugby Ltd yesterday indicated that there is unlikely to be an update in the coming days, as they continue to look at the material provided by Sportsmail on the companies jointly owned by Wray and the players.
Although the base salary cap has been frozen at £7m for the last few seasons and will remain so until the end of next season, elements of the regulations have been changed.
One recent change has been to close a loophole that would have allowed clubs to designate a player as one of their marquee names and front- load his contract, then switch his status to that of a standard squad player.
This would have meant that a club could have offered a player £800,000 over two years, for example, paying him £600,000 in the year he was a marquee player, then make him a non-marquee player and paying him the remaining £200,000 for that year.
Now, it appears that the full contract amount must be declared and the payments are averaged out.
Sports lawyers yesterday warned that deals not directly involving the club’s books might be difficult to capture within the cap.
This is despite the salary cap regulations stating that the salary should include any payments to or from ‘connected parties’ of the club and player — and includes family members, agents and shareholders of companies.
Yesterday, leading solicitors Brabners issued legal commentary on the issues raised in Sportsmail’s investigation and the parameters of the salary cap.
James Pearson, who specialises in sport at the firm, said: ‘The salary cap rules are wide and take account of any relevant value transferred by directors or associates of the club to players, including any payment in kind that a player would not have received were it not for his involvement with the club. The business dealings will likely come under close scrutiny by the salary cap manager (a Premiership Rugby role) who has the ability to investigate whether any arrangement between club and player breaches the salary cap rules.
‘ It is worth noting that the arrangements may fall outside the scope of the regulations and no wrong-doing may be found.
‘Already on social media there is comment about whether such activities are in the spirit of the game.
‘The question that the salary cap manager will no doubt be tackling is whether or not such activities are related to the game and caught by the regulations or whether they are separate.’