The union that represents NBA players said Friday it is being investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The announcement from the National Basketball Players Association came on the heels of a Yahoo report that the union’s executive director Billy Hunter had asked the organization to invest millions of dollars in a failing bank tied to his son.
Hunter was notified of the inquiry April 25 in a subpoena for union documents, according to anonymous sources in a Bloomberg story on Friday. The focus of the probe remains unclear.
The players union said in a statement it would fully cooperate, Bloomberg reported. When contacted by The Huffington Post on Friday, the NBA declined comment.
On Wednesday, Yahoo reported that Hunter had in 2009 tried to persuade the union’s executive committee and player representatives to invest up to $9 million in Interstate Net Bank, a Cherry Hill, N.J., institution already peppered by cease and desist letters from regulators. Pat Garrity, then the union’s treasurer, later discovered that Hunter’s son, Todd Hunter, was on the bank’s board of directors and confronted Hunter about why that wasn’t disclosed, according to Yahoo!.
The investigation exacerbates an already tumultuous atmosphere at the players union. The executive committee last week asked union president Derek Fisher, who had called for an audit of finances conducted by Hunter and the union, to resign.
Source: Huffington Post
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