Mets' Sale To Steve Cohen Faces Last Hurdle As City Evaluates Ownership Change
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- The sale of the Mets to Steve Cohen was thought to be a done deal, but there's one hurdle they didn't expect -- Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Major League Baseball will be voting Friday on the sale of the Mets to the hedge fund billionaire. The vote is expected to go through, but the sale is still in jeopardy because of one detail.
Citi Field is actually owned by the city of New York and leased to the Mets.
RELATED STORY -- Mets Announce Agreement To Sell Team To Billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Steve Cohen
A detail in the lease agreement prevents the transfer of ownership to a felon or a person who has "controlled" a felon, CBS2's Steve Overmyer reports.
Cohen has never been convicted, but his former company was found to engage in insider trading and one of his employees was convicted of a felony.
"It's our land. There is a legal requirement that if there's an ownership change is has to be evaluated. Our law department is doing that evaluation based on the law," de Blasio said.
The mayor has maintained he's only doing his job, but why did he call MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for a private conversation?
"I reached out to Commissioner Manfred simply to let him know that we had this legal responsibility and we were pursuing it and doing due diligence and that we intended to, obviously, go through that process as quickly as possible," de Blasio said.
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Another potential ownership group headed by Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez has been vying to buy the team, and they vowed to look into every option to do so.
The baseball ownership group has already signed off on the $2.4 billion sale to Cohen. What remains in the executive council, which is expected to green light the sale Friday.
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