Let me be clear, I do not seek to suggest anyone is telling lies. However the explanation you have relayed here doesn't seem to me to provide a full answer. In saying that I appreciate the you personally are simply passing on what you have been told.
I can happily accept that the comments of the Toulouse Chairman have been 'lost in translation', it wouldn't be the first or last time something of that nature had occurred. The only way I can make sense of this is to assume that LE got their story initially from the Toulouse Chairman's comments(which were misunderstood) and then put this to the RFL for clarification and were told it was correct. That they were told it was correct by the RFL can not, by any reasonable consideration of the circumstances, be attributed to 'translation'.
Things would be far clearer if Mr Ledger or the RFL chose to explain how or why they failed to understand their own rules. They are, naturally, free to explain as much, or as little, as they choose but blaming translation when that clearly cannot address their own role in this does them no favours and only invites cynicism, imho, of course.