The owner, the coach and the GM: Inside Rocky Elsom’s French connection

A company owned by Rocky Elsom was paid hundreds of thousands of euros by French rugby club RC Narbonne while he was its president and majority owner, but the ex-Wallabies captain says the payments were fully declared and signed off by the board.

Elsom said the payments were used to save the club money as he was able to hire support staff as consultants rather than on full-time contracts.

Rocky Elsom has vowed to appeal his conviction in France.Credit: Getty

Scant details have emerged of the case against Elsom since he had an international arrest warrant issued for him last week, having been convicted in absentia in France and sentenced to five years jail for misuse of corporate assets and forgery during his time in charge of the club a decade ago.

A French lawyer in the case, Patrick Tabet, said the 41-year-old had made a “completely unjustified” payment of €79,000 ($128,000) to a former coach and paid €7200 ($11,670) a month to an Australian general manager who “never came to Narbonne”, while a court ordered him to pay back €700,000 ($1.13 million) he was judged to have embezzled.

The Herald can reveal former Wallabies halfback Chris Whitaker, who was an assistant coach at Narbonne between 2013 and 2016, was the recipient of the payment in question and the Australian general manager referred to was Victorian-based Englishman Chris Bayman, who had previously been a minor shareholder in Narbonne with Elsom and others, including ex-Australia coach Bob Dwyer.

Bayman and Dwyer were not shareholders at the time of the controversial payments, and they and Whitaker are not accused of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

However, Elsom rejected the suggestion there was anything improper about the payment to Whitaker and maintained Bayman had never been paid at all, information he said was known to those who succeeded him in running the club in 2016.

“They know very well the justification. It’s because [Whitaker] was owed that money and if I didn’t pay it, the club would then be sued,” said Elsom, who has maintained his innocence and said he wasn’t even aware of the criminal proceedings against him.

“[They] know very well [Bayman] never got paid. He was proposed as a transition general manager and when [they] changed their mind [they] didn’t pay him. They’re misleading people by saying he was paid €7200 a month. He wasn’t paid a cent, and they know that.”

According to Elsom, relations with the local businessmen who sat on the board of Narbonne had deteriorated, ultimately bringing about his exit in 2016 after he opposed selling the club to an investor who purported to represent Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, telling them: “He’s not who you think he is.”

The businessmen and the mayor, whose local government part-funded the club, still wanted to sell and reportedly questioned €360,000 ($584,000) in fees paid by the club to two foreign companies – Elke Elbow and Noble Tech.

Documents filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show Elsom had been a director and sole shareholder of Elke Elbow, which is registered to an address at Black Mountain, west of Noosa, before he stepped aside and transferred his shares to a relative. It was through Elke Elbow, to which Elsom returned as a director in 2018, that he owned his stake in Narbonne.

Elsom declared the payments to the company had been fully transparent, with a total of €15,000 ($24,000) a month permitted under an arrangement he said was agreed upon by the board in 2013.

Chris Whitaker spent four years on the coaching staff at NarbonneCredit: Getty

He said he used money sent there to hire Australian-based support staff, such as a strength and conditioning coach, analysts and sports scientists on a part-time basis in key periods, such as the pre-season, sparing the club the expense of putting them on full-time.

“They’re talking about €300,000, or whatever amount it was, over three years, for services that they benefited from,” Elsom said.

“There’s no doubt that a product and service was received by the club and I would say it resulted in substantial savings for the football club. It was never a secret. It had been announced and ratified by the entire board that [later] took over in 2016. So they knew exactly what it was.”

Elsom also explained funds sent to Hong Kong-based Noble Tech, which he said had a deal with the club to provide “graphical representation of medical data”.

Contacted on Thursday, Whitaker said: “I was employed at Narbonne for four years and after that I went and coached another team in France. I left on good terms and was paid what I was entitled to, nothing more, nothing less.”

Michael Bouchier, another Australian who was a board member at Narbonne in 2015 and 2016, said Whitaker had been offered a contract extension in 2016, “but with the many changes at the club, the decision was made to move forward with other coaches”.

“A settlement of €79,000 was offered to Chris as consideration for what he was owed and what had been promised,” Bouchier said.

“This formal documentation was in RCNM’s possession when I resigned from the board. [The board] discussed the matter with Chris and there is no evidence or allegation of any wrongdoing on Chris’ behalf.”

Bayman, whose background is in marketing, said: “I am the individual who is referred to in the media who was ‘paid €7200 per month, never came to Narbonne and never did any work’.

“As someone who speaks French, knows RCNM in great detail and most of the club’s local board members, I was asked by Rocky Elsom to handle the transition from his administration to the new. The new administration were aware of my nomination and had largely been supportive on the back of my connection with UK sponsors.”

Bayman said he was not paid because the administration changed its mind about recruiting him.

“This was a foreseeable outcome and for RCNM’s lawyer, Mr Tabet, to use it as part of the justification for Rocky Elsom’s conviction and prison sentence, shows just how weak their case against Rocky is,” he said.

“For the record, I was never paid a cent of the €7200, but I was pivotal in saving RCNM from relegation in 2011, when it was financially stricken under the guidance of many of the same people that ran it from 2016 to 2018.”

Bayman said he fully supported Elsom “in his endeavour to clear his name of these ridiculous charges”.

It is unknown if payments to Elsom’s company and Noble Tech featured in the case against Elsom in France.

Attempts to reach the French lawyer Tabet have been unsuccessful.

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