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May 8, 2010
Vetting the Nets’ Suitor Is No Easy Task
The New York Times
By Richard Sandomir
The New York Times looks to see how well Mikhail Prokhorov, expected to become the new owner of the New Jersey Nets, might have been vetted by the NBA. What's discovered is that news reporting can be a lot of work.
Leagues generally do not say much about the details of vetting prospective owners. It is a sensitive personnel process most often involving very wealthy people. But Prokhorov is a special case.
First, a foreign owner of a major league United States team is a rarity (the only other one is the Nintendo money that went into acquiring the Seattle Mariners). Second, no American league has vetted anyone like Prokhorov, who has benefited mightily from Russia’s frenetic transformation to capitalism.
Last month, The New York Post reported that Prokhorov was doing business in violation of American and European economic sanctions against Zimbabwe and its dictator, Robert Mugabe.
The league and Prokhorov said he was not violating any sanctions. But the report was seized on by Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, who demanded that the Treasury Department, which administers the sanctions first imposed by President Bush in 2003, investigate Prokhorov. Pascrell, who has parochial interests in opposing the team’s move from New Jersey, said the real issue was who the N.B.A. did business with.
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Mike Bass, a league spokesman, said, “We have no further comment on the congressman’s factually unsupported allegations."
Pascrell’s larger concern is whether the vetting of Prokhorov was thorough enough.
Last fall, Stern said the investigation into Prokhorov would be “very extensive, stringent, some would say, invasive.” On Friday, Bass said that generally, “it is fair to say that we do not routinely investigate the business operations of every company in which a prospective owner has invested.”
It makes you wonder what the league did not investigate about Prokhorov.
NoLandGrab: I thought that understanding the NBA's investigation was why we read this Times article.
Related coverage...
Atlantic Yards Report, In shallow look at charges against Prokhorov, the Times can't verify claims that his company is active in Zimbabwe
The New York Times, which pursued "the journalism of verification" when in came to the murky saga of Megan and Jeff, authors of a publicity-seeking (seeming) stunt in Madison Square Park, today throws up its investigatory hands when it comes to expected Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov.
The article, headlined Vetting the Nets’ Suitor Is No Easy Task, is written by New York-based sports business reporter Richard Sandomir, with no cited help from Times staffers in Russia or in Africa, despite the expertise and assistance they might provide.
While the article leaves lingering questions about both Prokhorov and the NBA's vetting process, it also fails to evaluate some information that would raise even further questions about the alleged Prokhorov connection to sanctions-busting in Zimbabwe.
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Sandomir notes that vetting a foreign owner is rare, and Prokhorov is the first "who has benefited mightily from Russia’s frenetic transformation to capitalism."
The Times does not ask the Treasury Department whether it has followed up on Pascrell's call for an investigation of sanctions-busting.
Sandomir concludes:
Last fall, Stern said the investigation into Prokhorov would be “very extensive, stringent, some would say, invasive.” On Friday, [league spokesman Mike] Bass said that generally, “it is fair to say that we do not routinely investigate the business operations of every company in which a prospective owner has invested.”
It makes you wonder what the league did not investigate about Prokhorov.
Rather than end with a reporter-as-columnist's lingering question, why can't the Times do some investigation of its own? It worked with Megan and Jeff.
Posted by steve at May 8, 2010 8:15 AM