This has, 'allegedly', gone on since the cap was introduced, with antipodean players usually being implicated; aka the Singapore parachute - whereby players would supposedly find a wedge of moolahs waiting in an account at their stop over point on the way home. Not that it's ever been proved, but it does have the beauty of sounding very plausible and difficult to pin down. To be honest, I'm far from sure how this sort of thing would fit in with current money laundering rules, though being neither launderer nor accountant, I'm not the best to proffer an opinion.

There's also the question of hmrc getting involved if people are getting paid in brown envelopes

Lets play the "if" game. If they are found guilty, and if the RFL apply a punishment. Then, what happens. If the punishment is heavy then they finish bottom of SL and play in the Middle Eights. Probably where they would have finished anyway. Some punishment, (I don't think)................if, of course being a big word

I think Marc Green's point is probably that Salford allegedly committed these breaches last season. In a live salary cap environment, they should have got the punishment last season too. Which if it was a significant points deduction and depending on what time of the year it happened (for example, during the Middle 8s), it may have meant that Wakefield should have stayed up automatically, while Bradford played at home in the MPG against Halifax.

If that is what should have happened, that would explain why he would be angry with the RFL for not imposing the sanction at the time, and why he's complaining about it taking so long. I would expect the Halifax boys to be quite miffed too if it was the case.

But I'm very much theorising here.

Whatever's been going on the RFL need to pull their finger out and conclude the investigation.

RFL pull their finger out! you must be joking that bunch of muppets couldn't manage a train set if you asked them

This is next on the list after the RFL finish the investigation in to Huddersfield tapping Kopout up.

Well, if it comes out that Salford have set out to circumvent the cap then the RFL needs to take action and be seen to take action.

The Singapore thing was about tax avoidance, not salary cap, where the club would pay for the player's image rights to a company owned by the player but registered in their home country. They got their cash in a country with a more favourable tax system. It was HMRC who clamped down, not the RFL. It counted on the cap.

Marwan tweeted that it's up to the club how much they give the player of the season award. So I guess it goes like this: 'Player X: we'll give you £100K for playing, £50K for consultancy for my company, and you've also won the £20K player of the year for the next three years".

It is indeed up to you, Mr Koukash, how much you give the player of the season, just as it is up to us and the salary cap auditors as to whether we actually believe that's genuinely what the payment really was

I assumed the player of the season comment was in reference to people questioning him buying Niall Evalds a Maserati. One way of again getting around salary cap rules when you can "gift" a player a very expensive motor.

In the words of the thrush doctor, "it smells a bit fishy".

Obviously getting someone a Maserati for winning player of the year should count toward the cap.

I don't see why arbitrarily deciding to monetarily reward someone for what they do on the pitch should count towards a sports team's salary cap.

bradford moaning about another team breaking the salary cap rules

[urlhttp://www.theguardian.com/sport/2006/aug/15/rugbyleague.sport[/url

might just deduct salford 2 points

Having read his tweets, it puzzles me that Koukash has hit out at Marc Green with the jibe "if you were any good at running a club you would be in the Super League" or words to that effect.

Well we might not be in the Super League, and we might not have a bottomless pit of money. But at least Marc Green runs our club with some dignity.

It's a good job you gave the link, I'm sure people didn't know about this story 10 years ago.

It doesn't. Only a fool would suggest otherwise.

I am about to buy a SL franchise, as I won the American Powerball and am now a multibillionaire. My wage structure is that all my squad of 100 would be paid £5 each per season.

At the end of season awards, a gift fund would be distributed on a sliding scale. The POTY would get £250,000 and the last in the voting would get £100,000.

I should think they would deserve it as I can't afford to pay them a decent wage yet they work so hard all year.

Great idea sounds like market value £££££

I'm unclear what Koukash is banging on about with this one? He appears to be claiming that the RFL have no right interfering with a salary cap investigation as the courts have already ruled in Salford's favour? Am I missing something as I was under the impression that Salford where in court to rule over a dispute with Tony Puletua (which is where the double contract issue came up), not for a salary cap hearing. I'm assuming that the courts won't have had any interest in the salary cap?

Am I understanding this correctly?

To say Koukash has so much money he does seem short of a few shillings at the same time.

That's pretty much what's happened, yeah. And in addition to that someone on the VT is claiming that the court didn't exactly 'rule in Salford's favour' either. Tony was claiming for monies owed via the second contract. The court ruled that Salford rugby club didn't owe Tony anything, but that his claim against the other company was valid and the court ordered the second contract to be honoured. So essentially Tony got what he was after.

However I should point out that the poster on the VT didn't back this up with any proof so it could quite easily all be a load of nonsense.

Thanks for the clarification. Sounds like it's opened a can of worms. Koukash sounded so adamant on Twitter that the courts had already dealt with the issue that I thought i'd missed something. It'll be interesting to see how this one pans out but I can't see anything coming of it unless he's done a Melbourne and filed all the incriminating paperwork.

The courts didn't rule on whether the salary cap rules had been breached. That's a matter for the RFL.

Our experience at the Bulls will have shown the uninitiated how company law can be used to make anything look like anything, legally turn a huge profit into a huge loss by the stroke of an accounting pen, and create impenetrable fog around the smoke and mirrors that conceal any of the truth about what goes on. And even when the odd snippet comes out, six sides all deny it and claim a different story.

We also know that, in the end, not only do you never get to the bottom of anything, you don't even get to do much more than prise the lid off a little bit.

It's all legal, like the banks losing hundreds of billions while all taking millions in bonuses, and almost completely unaccountable.

Once some elements of the press would dig and drill and peck at stories until they got to the nitty gritty but frankly there is no investigative press any more, nobody seemingly gives a sh=#FFFFFF[size=5.[/sizeit.

The [url=http://www.salfordstar.com/article.asp?id=2801Salford Star (as in this article|)[/url is one place that does try to dig into the complicated Salford morass, but while you can get quite a lot of information from reading their articles, it seems clear that they can not hope to get to the bottom of things either, with straight bats being played by the relevant parties.

What a bloody mess..