Former Australia rugby captain Rocky Elsom has been sentenced to five years in jail after a French court found him guilty of misusing corporate assets while president of French club Narbonne.<\/p>\n
A court official told Reuters that the 41-year-old was found guilty of forgery, use of forgery and misuse of corporate assets by a Narbonne court last week. He has denied the charges.<\/p>\n
Elsom, who was at Narbonne from 2013-16, was convicted in absentia and an international warrant has been issued for his arrest. He was also ordered to pay back 700,000 euros (NZ$1.25 million).<\/p>\n
Elsom said in a statement published by the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday that he had not been informed of the court hearing or given an opportunity to defend himself against the allegations.<\/p>\n
He added that it was a “clear perversion of justice”. The paper said Elsom had engaged a lawyer to appeal the court’s decision.<\/p>\n
A powerful blindside flanker, Elsom played 75 tests for the Wallabies and captained them from 2009 until just before the 2011 Rugby World Cup.<\/p>\n
He also enjoyed a successful spell with Irish province Leinster and told Britain’s Times newspaper this month that he was coaching at a Dublin school.<\/p>\n
-Reuters<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Australia rugby captain Rocky Elsom has been sentenced to five years in jail after a French court found him guilty of misusing corporate assets while president of French club Narbonne. A court official told Reuters that the 41-year-old was found guilty of forgery, use of forgery and misuse of corporate assets by a Narbonne […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11704"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11706,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11704\/revisions\/11706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}