Premiership Rugby has published the report into Saracens’ salary cap breaches.
The England and European champions were fined £5.36 million and docked 35 league points after a hearing found they failed to disclose payments to players and exceeded the wages ceiling in each of the three seasons up to 2019.
Under the salary cap regulations, the decision of the panel chaired by Lord Dyson had previously remained confidential and only a summary had been made public, but Saracens this week called for the details to be made public.
Darren Childs, chief executive of Premiership Rugby, said: “We are pleased to be able to finally publish the full judgement on Saracens’ breaches of the salary cap in the last three seasons.
“Now that everyone can see the details, the decision will show that Premiership Rugby has taken firm action to enforce the regulations and our management of the salary cap has been endorsed by the panel.”
Saracens have since been told they will be relegated due to breaches of the cap in the current season and the report is separate to a wide-ranging review being carried out by Lord Myners.
The report has been adjusted to “omit the names of players and other information that could be used to identify individuals”, with a PRL statement adding that “no other information has since been redacted from the report”.
In a summary of the decision, the panel said that Saracens “continuously and recklessly failed to comply with its obligations to co-operate with the SCM (salary cap manager).
“This failure was all the more serious because in 2015 Saracens settled an earlier charge by PRL of failing to co-operate with the SCM.”
Also, the breaches for 2016-17 and 2018-19 were “several and not isolated and involved Saracens massively exceeding the cap for these two years”.
The three-man panel led by Lord Dyson rejected the argument of former Saracens chairman Nigel Wray, who bankrolls the club, that investment is not salary.
The report details how Wray entered into property investments with a number of players, whose names have been omitted as part of the redaction.
The report says: “We are satisfied that these capital contributions were salary”.
The panel found that the double winners acted deliberately in attempting to break the salary cap, adding that their conduct was “egregious”.
“We do not accept that Saracens breeches can all be characterised as merely negligent,” the report said.
“It’s failure to to co-operate with (SCM) Mr Rogers and seek clarification was egregious, particularly in light of the events leading up to the 2015 settlement
“It took risks and is now paying the price for doing so.”
