The Washington Football Team's three minority owners "discovered 'serious corporate irregularities'" in reviewing the team's '19 financial statements, "including 'long missing financials, breaches of the partnership agreement and other significant issues,'" according to Clarke & Reinhard of the WASHINGTON POST. The allegations were made in an affidavit filed late Monday in federal court in Maryland by investment banker John Moag, who is "handling the co-owners' sale." Moag's affidavit was filed "in response" to WFT majority Owner Dan Snyder's "pursuit of information related to his $10 million defamation case against an India-based media company." Within hours, Snyder's lawyers "countered with a filing calling Moag's allegations 'rife with scandalous and willfully defamatory statements.'" Snyder's legal team yesterday followed with another court filing that asked U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander to "take punitive action against Moag by holding him in contempt, requiring him to pay Snyder's legal fees in the matter and striking his affidavit from the docket." The filing "suggests the co-owners' alleged findings, for which no evidence is offered, explain at least part of the acrimony behind the breakup of the 17-year partnership and the personal animus between Snyder and the three men" -- FedEx CEO Frederick Smith, NVR Chair Dwight Schar and Black Diamond Capital Chair & CEO Robert Rothman -- who since '19 have been trying to sell their collective 40% stake in the franchise (WASHINGTON POST, 12/30).
