oh the rampant wrongness these singlet wearing clowns suffer from
the Storm have posted many profits recently
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/na ... 5857630482
AUSTRALIA'S corporate watchdog is set to make inquiries of the National Rugby League to ascertain whether corporate law has been breached in the Melbourne Storm salary cap scandal.
While the Australian Securities & Investments Commission has declined to comment on the rort that has resulted in the club being stripped of its 2007 and 2009 premierships and fined $1.6 million, it is understood that the commission is closely monitoring the situation.
It remains unclear whether the salary cap breaches are a case of fraud or deception, which would be a matter for the Victoria Police, or whether they also involve possible contraventions of the directors' duties and accounting provisions of the Corporations Act.
Accountancy firm Deloitte has been installed by the club's owner, News Limited, to undertake a forensic examination. And the Storm's auditors, Ernst & Young, which yesterday refused to comment on the matter, is also believed to be carrying out its own internal investigation.
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"Forensic accounting simply means accounting that is to do with or may end up in court," said Owain Stone, chairman of the National Forensic Accounting Committee, an arm of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Australia.
"What that means is that forensic accounting is quite a broad church. The most relevant areas here involves fraud investigations and computer forensics. It's almost impossible to do an investigation these days into a complex fraud without involving computer forensics."
Forensic accountants tend to have a heightened degree of scepticism, possibly because they have seen a lot more frauds that anyone else, said Mr Stone, who is also a partner at KordaMentha.
Ian Ramsay, director of the Centre for Corporate Law at Melbourne University, noted that there were numerous legal ramifications that would be giving "some individuals sleepless nights".
"This is a company and there's live issues about the duties of directors and officers under the Corporations Act. There's also live issues about financial reporting," Professor Ramsay said.
"And then there's the Crimes Act . . . which covers things such as the falsification of documents, false accounting and obtaining financial advantage by deception. That carries a maximum term of imprisonment of 10 years."
While there has been no suggestion that the Storm board knew about the second set of books and secret payments to players, directors or officers of a company found to have breached their civil duties face the prospect of being banned from corporate life, fines of up to $200,000 or orders to pay compensation.
If such breaches are deemed to be criminal, the penalty includes a maximum jail term of five years.
A spokesman for the Australian Taxation Office told The Weekend Australian that it would "piggyback" on Deloitte's forensic investigation.
Despite the current uproar, Melbourne Storm's latest accounts reveal the embattled club to be in a sound financial position, having turned its previous year's $967,000 loss into a $1.6 million profit.
The club's recent success in the National Rugby League, including two premierships in the past three years, has obviously started flowing through to its bottom line, with income from membership fees rising by more than $200,000 to $1.3m during last season.
I think these new owners were referring to overall
News have lost a fair bit of dosh overall over the 15 years on the storm ..... but have made healthy profits on this operation since 2009
&
this will continue
meanwhile theres some VFL clubs doing impersonations of vacume cleaners ATM
vacuuming up the VFL's dough like its dust
