Former Australian rugby international Rocky Elsom sentenced to three years in prison
The public prosecutor in Narbonne requested on Friday a three-year prison sentence for former RC Narbonne president and former Australian rugby international Rocky Elsom, who is being retried for embezzlement after appealing a previous conviction in October to five years in prison.
The prosecutor also requested an arrest warrant, as well as a €630,000 fine against Mr. Elsom, who was once again absent but represented by his lawyer, Me Yann Le Bras.
The former Wallabies captain and flanker, with 75 international caps, had been unreachable throughout the first proceedings. Absent from the trial, he had justified himself by claiming that he was not informed of the hearing date. He thus appealed the first judgment, during which an international arrest warrant had been issued against him.
Narbonne, French champion in 1936 and 1979, had been placed in liquidation and relegated to Fédérale 1 in 2018 after years of financial difficulties.
“The issue is not whether the club was doing well before the presidency of the former Australian international,” said the civil party’s lawyer, the club’s liquidator Me Patrick Tabet, to AFP. “The issue is all the money he wasted while he was president. That’s the real question: did he have the right to do it or was it abuse of corporate assets?”
“There is no abuse of corporate assets in this case,” said Rocky Elsom’s lawyer, Me Le Bras, claiming his client’s innocence. He argued that Elsom “did not steal or plunder the club during the ten months he was in charge before a change in governance, but essentially paid salaries owed to players and a bill to the beer distributor”.
Elsom, president of Racing Club de Narbonne Méditerranée in 2015-2016, is notably accused of having paid €79,000 to a former coach without justification, and hiring as general manager an individual living in Australia for around €7,200 per month, who “never came to Narbonne” and “did no work” for the club, according to Me Tabet.
In the first trial, the court found him guilty of embezzlement, forgery, and use of forgery, sentencing him to five years in prison and ordering him to pay €705,000 to the civil party.
The ongoing procedure “has nothing to do” with the club in its current legal form, which was created after the facts, the RCNM management emphasized last week. The club is now playing in Nationale after narrowly missing promotion to Pro D2 last season.
The decision in this second trial will be announced on March 14.
