how to set capabilities (setcap) on perf

I'd like to use the perf utility. I was following instructions to set up a privileged group of users who are permitted to execute performance monitoring and observability without limits (as instructed here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/perf-security.html) . I added the group and limited access to users not in the group. I started having problems when assigning capabilities to the perf tool:

setcap cap_sys_admin,cap_sys_ptrace,cap_syslog=ep perf

I get an invalid arguments error saying

fatal error: Invalid argument
usage: setcap [-q] [-v] [-n ] (-r|-|)  [ ... (-r|-|)  ]

Note  must be a regular (non-symlink) file.

But running stats perf gives me this

File: ./perf
  Size: 1622      	Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 10307h/66311d	Inode: 35260925    Links: 1
Access: (0750/-rwxr-x---)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: ( 1001/perf_users)
Access: 2021-12-03 13:08:48.923220351 +0100
Modify: 2021-11-05 17:02:56.000000000 +0100
Change: 2021-12-03 12:31:49.451991980 +0100
 Birth: -

which says the file is a regular file. What could be the problem? How can I set the capabilities for the Perf tool? Linux distribution: Ubuntu 20.04 EDIT: Last 20 output lines of strace setcap cap_sys_admin,cap_sys_ptrace,cap_syslog=ep perf:

munmap(0x7f825054c000, 90581)           = 0
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, CAP_MAC_OVERRIDE) = 1
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, 0x30 /* CAP_??? */) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, 0x28 /* CAP_??? */) = 1
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, 0x2c /* CAP_??? */) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, 0x2a /* CAP_??? */) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
prctl(PR_CAPBSET_READ, 0x29 /* CAP_??? */) = -1 EINVAL (Invalid argument)
brk(NULL)                               = 0x55de3e858000
brk(0x55de3e879000)                     = 0x55de3e879000
capget({version=_LINUX_CAPABILITY_VERSION_3, pid=0}, NULL) = 0
capget({version=_LINUX_CAPABILITY_VERSION_3, pid=0}, {effective=0, permitted=0, inheritable=0}) = 0
capget({version=_LINUX_CAPABILITY_VERSION_3, pid=0}, NULL) = 0
capset({version=_LINUX_CAPABILITY_VERSION_3, pid=0}, {effective=1<