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The Melbourne Storm salary cap breach was a major breach of the National Rugby League's strictly enforced salary cap by the Melbourne Storm club over a period of five years. The discovery of these breaches in 2010 by the NRL resulted in it stripping the Storm of all honours achieved as a team since 2006 (including the 2007 and 2009 premierships and 2006, 2007 and 2008 minor premierships), and sentencing them to finish the 2010 NRL season (of which 75% was still to be played) in last place. In addition to being fined $1.689 million, Melbourne also had its 2010 World Club Challenge title removed, more than one year since the initial penalties were first announced. ==The Investigation== Following claims by a whistleblower that the club was keeping a second set of books, the NRL conducted an investigation in late 2009 and early 2010. After initially denying the claims, Storm officials confessed on 22 April 2010 that the club had committed serious and systematic breaches of the salary cap for the last five years by running a well-organized dual contract and bookkeeping system which left the NRL ignorant of $3.78 million in payments made to players outside of the salary cap, including $303,000 in 2006, $459,000 in 2007, $957,000 in 2008, $1.021 million in 2009 and $1.04 million in 2010. As a club's compliance with the NRL salary cap is supported by statutory declarations, the club's owners requested that fraud and perjury charges be laid against those responsible and stated that any person who knew of the breach would be expelled from the club. The Victorian Fraud Squad began preliminary investigations on 23 April, and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission also made preliminary investigations and indicated an interest in investigating breaches of the Corporations Act. Storm executives had arranged for inflated invoices to be submitted to hide the payments to players. This involved submitting invoices of up to $20,000 above the real value of the services rendered with this amount paid directly to players by the third party suppliers, although there was no suggestion that the suppliers were involved in submitting the inflated invoices. As a result, NRL Chief Executive David Gallop stripped the Melbourne Storm of their 2007 and 2009 premierships and their 2006, 2007 and 2008 minor premierships, fined them an Australian sporting record $1,689,000 ($1.1 million in NRL prize money which was re-distributed equally between the remaining 15 clubs, $89,000 in prize money from the World Club Challenge which was re-distributed to the Leeds Rhinos, and the maximum of $500,000 for breaching the salary cap), deducted all eight premiership points they had already received in the 2010 season and barred them from receiving any more premiership points (including points automatically awarded for a bye during the season) for the rest of the 2010 season. The Storm initially accepted this decision without question but later appealed the loss of their two premierships and premiership points for the 2010 season. The court action was later dropped with the Storm paying the NRL's legal costs.〔(Storm legal action collapses )〕 The Storm were also ordered to cut their payroll by $1,012,500 to meet the 2011 salary cap by December 31 2010;〔(NRL Fixtures – NRL Draw – NRL.com )〕〔(Storm ordered to cut over $1m from payroll )〕 failure to do so would have resulted in the club being suspended from the 2011 NRL season. On 23 April the NRL seized a secret dossier hidden in the home of acting chief executive Matt Hanson. The dossier contains letters of offer to three of the Storm's star players (Greg Inglis, Billy Slater, and Cameron Smith) and another unnamed player guaranteeing illegal payments in the form of goods from third parties. For one player with a $400,000 contract lodged with the NRL, the letter of offer was valued at $950,000, and contained a $20,000 gift voucher for a national retailer and a $30,000 boat. Other offers included a new car for a player’s partner and $30,000 in home renovations. The offers together amounted to $700,000 of which the four players had already received $400,000. While Waldron had signed all the letters of offer only Inglis and Slater had signed theirs, albeit the letters were written in a way that the players may not have realised the extra payments were outside the cap.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Melbourne Storm salary cap breach」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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