Dan Snyder and The Legal Weeds with ESPN's Don Van Natta, Jr.

Conduct Detrimental: THE Sports Law Podcast - A podcast by Conduct Detrimental

Welcome back to THE Sports Law Podcast! This is your one-stop-shop for all things sports law. The Dans are joined by ESPN's Don Van Natta, Jr. (@DVNJr) to break down the latest on the Dan Snyder investigations. Don recently wrote an article on ESPN that was a great investigative report into the financial misconduct investigations by federal prosecutors in Virginia. A new area of focus is that Dan Snyder allegedly took out a secret $55 million loan from Bank of America without the minority owners’ knowledge or approval. Don writes that this loan was taken out 16 months before Snyder bought out the three other minority stakeholders shares in the Washington Commanders. Such a loan would have required approval and sign-off from the three minority shareholders. During the confidential arbitration, the three minority owners began asking questions related to the teams' finances and books and legitimacy of the loan. However, when the three owners pushed the arbitrator for the source and legality of the loan the NFL shut down the arbitration, and shifted to mediation where the three owners then agreed to sell their shares. Further, documents show that for the loan to be approved the six-person board of the Commanders needed to approve the loan (three of which were the minority owners) and Bank of America never received that approval, however NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's signature is on the approval by the league for the Commanders to take on the loan. The three minority owners, who are billionaires as well, all claimed that Snyder was using the Commanders organization as his own personal piggy-bank, even citing a $4.5 million payment for the teams' logo to be placed on his private plane. A potential conflict could arise from this investigation into the $55 million loan, provided by Bank of America, because Bank of America is leading the current sale of the Commanders organization. You can read Don's full article on ESPN here. *** Have a topic you want to write about? ANYONE and EVERYONE can publish for ConductDetrimental.com. Let us know if you want to join the team. Hosts: Dan Wallach (@WallachLegal) | Dan Lust (@SportsLawLust) Producers: Mike Lawson (@mike_sonof_law) | Holly Summers (@ProsecutieRests) Twitter | Instagram | TikTok |  YouTube | Website | Email --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/condetrimental/support