Former Australia captain Elsom gets two-year jail sentence
Former Australia rugby union captain Rocky Elsom has received a two-year prison sentence after being found guilty of misusing corporate assets while president of French club Narbonne.
The 42-year-old, who was also fined 100,000 euros (£84,141) by the French court - with half of that sum suspended - was convicted in absentia on Friday.
An international warrant has been issued for his arrest, with his whereabouts unknown.
Elsom, who made 75 appearances for his country and also won the Heineken Cup with Leinster in 2009, took charge of the club in the south of France in 2015-16 and has previously denied any wrongdoing.
He received an initial five-year prison term in October 2024, but was retried following an appeal.
At the October 2024 trial, which he also did not attend, Elsom was found guilty of forgery, use of forgery and misuse of corporate assets.
The forgery charges were dropped from the 2025 trial, but the former has to pay compensation of 219,760 euros (£184,904) to the club's liquidator.
The public prosecutor had requested three years' imprisonment and a 630,000 euros (£529,411) fine for Elsom.
Narbonne have won the French rugby championship twice and finished runner-up three times. But the club went into liquidation in 2018 and now competes in the third-tier Federale league.
Blindside flanker Elsom captained the Wallabies from 2009 until 2011, having made his debut in 2005.
He was also named man of the match when he helped Dublin-based club Leinster win the 2009 Heineken Cup alongside Ireland greats Johnny Sexton and Brian O'Driscoll.
Elsom had been living in Ireland since August 2024, but fled the country after an arrest warrant was issued against him last year.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Forsyth: Life as a thriller writer, fighter pilot, journalist and spy
Frederick Forsyth, who has died at the age of 86, wrote meticulously researched thrillers which sold in their millions. A former fighter pilot, journalist and spy, many of his books were based on his own experience. He wove intricate technical details into his stories, without detracting from the lightning pace of his plots. His research often embarrassed the authorities, who were forced to admit that some of the shady tactics he revealed were used in real-life espionage. Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on 25 August 1938 in Ashford, Kent. The only child of a furrier, he dealt with loneliness by immersing himself in adventure stories. Among his favourites were the works John Buchan and H Rider Haggard, but Forsyth adored Ernest Hemingway's book on bullfighters, Death in the Afternoon. He was so captivated that - at the age of 17 - he went to Spain and started practising with a cape. He never actually fought a bull. Instead, he spent five months at the University of Granada before returning to do his national service with the RAF. Having spent years dreaming of becoming a pilot, Forsyth lied about his age so he could fly de Havilland Vampire jets. In 1958, he joined the Eastern Daily Press as a local journalist. Three years later, he moved to the Reuters news agency. At Tonbridge School, Forsyth had excelled in foreign languages but little else. Fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian, he was a born foreign correspondent. Posted to Paris, he covered a number of stories relating to assassination attempts on the life of France's President Charles de Gaulle, by members of the Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS). The group of ex-army personnel were angered at de Gaulle's decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. Forsyth called the OAS "white colonialists and neo-fascists". And he decided that, if they really wanted to kill de Gaulle, they would have to hire a professional assassin. Forsyth joined the BBC in 1965. Two years later, he was sent to Nigeria to cover the civil war that followed the secession of the south-eastern region of Biafra. When the fighting dragged on far longer than had been expected, Forsyth asked permission to stay and cover it. According to his autobiography, the BBC told him "it is not our policy to cover this war". "I smelt news management," he said. "I don't like news management." He quit his job and continued to cover the war as a freelance reporter for the next two years. He chronicled his experiences in The Biafra Story, which was published in 1969. He later claimed that, while in Nigeria, he began working for MI6, a relationship that continued for two decades. He also become friendly with a number of mercenaries, who taught him how to get a false passport, obtain a gun and break an enemy's neck. All these tricks of the trade would be incorporated in a tale of an attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, The Day of the Jackal, which he pounded out in his bedsit on an old typewriter in just 35 days. He spent months trying to get it published but faced a string of rejections. "For starters, de Gaulle was still alive," he said, "so readers already knew a fictional assassination plot set in 1963 couldn't succeed." Eventually, a publisher risked a short print run and sales of the book, described once as "an assassin's manual", took off, first in the UK and then in the US. The Day of the Jackal showcased what would become the traditional hallmarks of a Forsyth thriller. It wove together fact and fiction, often using the names of real individuals and events. The Jackal's forgery of a British passport, using the name of a dead child taken from a churchyard, was perfectly feasible in the days before electronic databases and cross-checking. The tale was made into an award-winning film in 1973, staring Edward Fox as the anonymous gunman. Forsyth followed up his success with The Odessa File, the story of a German reporter attempting to track down Eduard Roschmann - a notorious Nazi nicknamed the "Butcher of Riga" - who is protected by a secret society of former SS men known as Odessa. As part of his research, Forsyth travelled to Hamburg posing as a South African arms dealer. "I managed to penetrate their world and was feeling rather proud of myself," he later said. "What I didn't know was that the (contact) had passed a bookshop shortly after our meeting. And there, in the window, was The Day of the Jackal, with a great big picture of me on the back cover." The film of the book led to the identification of the real "Butcher of Riga", who was living in Argentina - after one of his neighbours went to see it at the local cinema. He was arrested by the Argentinian authorities, but skipped bail and fled to Paraguay. The book also mentioned a hoard of Nazi gold that was exported to Switzerland in 1944. Twenty-five years after publication, the Jewish World Congress discovered this passage and, eventually, located gold valued at £1bn. According to the Sunday Times, Forsyth's third novel, The Dogs of War, drew on his experience of organising a coup in Africa. The newspaper reported that Forsyth had once spent $200,000 hiring a boat and recruiting European and African soldiers of fortune for a raid designed to oust the President of Equatorial Guinea in 1972. The plan was said to have failed when the arrangements broke down and the soldiers were intercepted by the Spanish police in the Canary Islands, 3,000 miles from their objective. Then came Devil's Alternative, in which Britain's first female prime minister, Joan Carpenter, was firmly based on Margaret Thatcher, a politician Forsyth greatly admired. She later appeared, under her real name, in four Forsyth novels. There was a move into biography in 1982 with Emeka, the life story of Forsyth's friend Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the head of state of Biafra during that country's brief independence. In 1984, he returned to the novel with The Fourth Protocol: a complex tale of a Soviet plot to influence the British general election and install a hard-left Labour government. The book so impressed Sir Michael Caine that he persuaded Forsyth to allow a film version, in which the veteran actor starred alongside Pierce Brosnan. In the late 1980s, Forsyth separated from his first wife, the former model Carole Cunningham and was photographed alongside the actress Faye Dunaway. The Negotiator, published in 1991, continued the successful run while The Deceiver, the tale of a maverick but brilliant MI6 agent, was made into a BBC mini-series. After two more thrillers, The Fist of God and Icon, Forsyth took an abrupt detour with The Phantom of Manhattan: a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, which had been a successful musical. It was not a great success but, in 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber took elements of it for his musical follow-up to Phantom, Love Never Dies. A second set of short stories, The Veteran, also had mixed reviews but Forsyth bounced back in his usual style with Avenger, a 2003 political thriller and, three years later, The Afghan, which had links with the earlier Fist of God. By now, Forsyth had established a reputation as a broadcaster and political pundit. He was a frequent guest on the BBC's topical debate programme Question Time, as someone who held views on the right of the political spectrum. A committed Eurosceptic, he once derailed former Prime Minister Ted Heath on the programme - after proving that he had indeed, despite his denials, once signed a document agreeing to transfer UK gold reserves to Frankfurt. On turning 70, the pace of his writing began to slow. The Cobra, published in 2010, saw the return of some of the characters from Avenger. In 2013, Forsyth published The Kill List, a fast-moving tale built round a Muslim fanatic called The Preacher, whose online videos encouraged young Muslims to carry out a series of killings. He wrote all his books on a typewriter and refused to use the internet for his research. Ironically, his 18th novel, The Fox - published in 2018 - was a spy thriller about a gifted computer hacker. Forsyth announced it was to be his final book, but he later came out of self-imposed retirement after the death of his second wife, Sandy, in 2024. He said he was writing another adventure, and even suggested a raffle might give someone the chance to name a character after themselves. Having sold the film rights for £20,000 in the 1970s, Forsyth received no payment for Eddie Redmayne's version of The Day of the Jackal when it was re-imagined for television last year on Sky. Well into his 80s, he had long since agreed to stop research trips to far-flung parts of the world - when a trip to Guinea-Bissau left him with an infection that nearly cost him a leg. "It is a bit drug-like, journalism," he admitted. "I don't think that instinct ever dies." It was an instinct that made his life as full and exciting as his thrillers. The Day Of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies Lee Child: Why Forsyth's Jackal changed thriller writing Frederick Forsyth reveals spy past
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Author of The Day Of The Jackal Frederick Forsyth has died
Frederick Forsyth, the author of The Day Of The Jackal, has died at the age of 86 after a brief illness, his literary agents Curtis Brown said. His book The Day Of The Jackal was turned into a 1973 film and last year a TV series on Sky Atlantic featuring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. The best-selling author was surrounded by his family when he died on Monday morning, Curtis Brown added. Read more: Forsyth, a former RAF pilot and investigative journalist turned novelist, was also known for his thrilling crime books The Fox, The Kill List and The Afghan. He was born in Ashford, Kent, in 1938 and joined the Royal Air Force in 1956 before leaving after two years to pursue a career in journalism. He covered international stories and the attempted assassination of French general Charles de Gaulle, which provided the inspiration for The Day Of The Jackal, which was published in 1971. In 2000 he became the first high-profile British writer to agree to publish a book exclusively on the internet. He revealed he had extensive involvement with MI6 in his 2015 memoir The Outsider: My Life In Intrigue. His agent Jonathan Lloyd said: "We mourn the passing of one of the world's greatest thriller writers. "Only a few weeks ago I sat with him as we watched a new and moving documentary of his life - In My Own Words, to be released later this year on BBC1 - and was reminded of an extraordinary life, well lived. "After serving as one of the youngest ever RAF pilots, he turned to journalism, using his gift for languages in German, French and Russian to become a foreign correspondent in Biafra. "Appalled at what he saw and using his experience during a stint as a secret service agent, he wrote his first and perhaps most famous novel, The Day Of The Jackal, and instantly became a global best-selling author. "He went on to write more than 25 books (many of which were made into films) that have sold over 75 million copies. "He will be greatly missed by his family, his friends, all of us at Curtis Brown and of course his millions of fans around the world - though his books will of course live on forever." This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the latest version. You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.
Newsweek
23 minutes ago
- Newsweek
Vikings Emerge as Possible Landing Spot for Packers Star
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers are hated rivals. Both the teams and fans very much dislike each other, as is the case with most teams in the NFC North division. Over the last couple of years, the division has become the best in the NFL. Last season, three of the four teams were playoff teams. The Chicago Bears were the only team that missed out, although they had an impressive offseason and should be vastly improved in 2025. On Monday, the Packers made a major move that the Vikings could capitalize on. They chose to release longtime star cornerback Jaire Alexander. Cornerback Jaire Alexander #23 of the Green Bay Packers gets set during the second quarter of an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, at Lambeau Field on October 13, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Cornerback Jaire Alexander #23 of the Green Bay Packers gets set during the second quarter of an NFL football game against the Arizona Cardinals, at Lambeau Field on October 13, 2024 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Photo byWhen that move is made official, Minnesota will have a great opportunity. Read more: Vikings GM Shares Major JJ McCarthy Truth At this point, the Vikings still need help in the secondary. What better way to get that help than by going out and signing Alexander now that he is a free agent? That is exactly what Kay Adams suggested to Alexander in a segment on the "Up & Adams" show. "Go to the Vikings. They need a corner!" she said. Pro Football Focus analyst Trevor Sikkema also named Minnesota as one of the top potential landing spots for Alexander ahead of the 2025 season. Alexander is still one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL. Unfortunately, injuries have held him back in a big way over the last couple of years. He has played in just seven games in each of the last two seasons. Last year, Alexander recorded 16 tackles, a fumble recovery, two interceptions, a defensive touchdown, and seven defended passes. He's still more than capable of making a huge impact. Read more: Steelers Could Make Huge Splash With Former Aaron Rodgers Teammate Adding the 28-year-old cornerback would also bring more of an edge to the Vikings' defense. He would be out to prove himself after being released by Green Bay and would have extra motivation to prove his old team wrong for giving up on him. As for the Packers, this would be a nightmare scenario. They know just how good Alexander is capable of being. Him landing with Minnesota would make a tough situation much worse. Expect to hear a lot of rumors and speculation about Alexander in the coming hours and days. He's a star hitting the market just before the season. Plenty of teams are going to come calling with interest, and it would not be surprising to see the Vikings be one of those teams. For more Minnesota Vikings and NFL news, head over to Newsweek Sports.
