How trio allegedly planned to pay Anthony Watmough $75,000 over salary cap
Kate McClymont
Published: November 3, 2016 - 12:15AM
Emails and text messages between a high-profile entrepreneur, the former Parramatta Eels NRL club CEO and a well-known player agent have allegedly revealed how the trio planned to pay footballer Anthony Watmough an extra $75,000 a year in circumvention of the salary cap.
A Fairfax Media investigation can reveal entrepreneur Stephen Moss and ex-Eels CEO Scott Seward inflated a contract to deliver the $75,000 a year to player agent George Mimis' client, ex-Manly star Watmough.
It can also be revealed that a legal battle looms between the embattled club and Moss, the 32-year-old son of former Macquarie Bank director and Eels tragic Bill Moss, with the Eels moving to cancel the controversial $1 million contract that was part of the alleged scam to channel money to players in breach of the salary cap.
Having recently raided the office of four player agents, including Mimis, the NSW Police Fraud and Cybercrime Squad announced it was scrutinising false or inflated invoices, which were allegedly used by the Parramatta rugby league club to channel money to their own players.
Records seen by the Herald indicate that this contract is likely to be of interest to the police.
On February 19, 2015, Seward, in his role as Eels CEO, negotiated a lucrative four-year deal worth a total of $1 million with Moss' company BlackCitrus for the provision of IT services.
Within this contract, which was not seen by any other club executive, there was an agreed payment of $75,000 a year for four years for BlackCitrus to provide "advisory" services.
The next day, February 20, 2015, Moss struck a deal for exactly the same amount of money over the same period to be paid to Watmough through another of Moss' companies, ScoreCube.
The payments round-robin is evident in the text messages that Moss sent to Seward.
On March 6, 2015, Moss sent Seward a text saying: "Disappointing invoices haven't been paid George Mimi's (sic) keeps chasing me I don't have an answer."
On May 26, 2015, Moss sent a text to Seward that outlined only too clearly the fact that Seward/Parramatta was paying Moss money so he could pay Mimis.
"Hey Scott can we chat tomorrow arvo? …George Mimis is on my back re paying him we need a better solution because being paid to pay him isn't working because we never get paid on time", records show.
ScoreCube's third-party agreement (TPA) with Watmough has already been identified as breaching salary cap regulations because TPAs cannot be entered into with a company that has a commercial arrangement. In this instance, Seward failed to disclose that ScoreCube was a wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackCitrus, which had an IT contract.
ScoreCube had a similar TPA with player Jarryd Hayne the previous year.
Last week new CEO Bevan Paul told club members that, based on evidence supplied by the NRL, "persons involved in third-party agreements have been advised that contracts will be re-tendered or cancelled".
Moss' lawyers have indicated they will oppose this course of action.
While BlackCitrus did carry out legitimate work for the club, the $1 million deal astonished club executives when it became public.
"A lot of people's reaction," Eels communications chief Josh Drayton told NRL investigators this year, was "how the hell did we end up with a quarter of a million dollar [per annum] contract?"
Drayton also told investigators that after Eels football manager Jason Irvine was sacked, he had to deal directly with Moss. As well as being shocked about the terms of the contract, Drayton said he was even more surprised when Moss told him part of the contract was "paying for Anthony Watmough's TPA".
In June last year the Parramatta board became aware that Seward and his friend Irvine had been deliberately cheating the salary cap by channelling payments to players by inflating invoices from suppliers and contractors.
Seward was forced to resign on June 11, 2015 and 10 days later Irvine was retrenched. Irvine now works as business development director at BlackCitrus. In addition, Irvine and Bill Moss are directors of a private company, Boston Leisure and Tourism.
Moss, Seward and Mimis did not return Fairfax Media's calls.
