On Monday afternoon, Jeff Passan of ESPN released an excerpt of the United States Treasury Department’s letter to Major League Baseball in which they deemed the agreement between MLB and the Cuban Baseball Federation as “unauthorized”.
The Trump Administration’s decision is based on Section 515.571 (e) of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, which “authorizes transactions related to the sponsorship or hiring of a Cuban national to work in the United States in a non-immigrant status […], except that an employer may not make payments to the Cuban government in connection with the sponsorship of hiring a Cuban national”.
According to the Treasury Department’s letter, “payment to the Cuban Baseball Federation is a payment to the Cuban government”, adding that “MLB’s payments to the Cuban Baseball Federation are prohibited unless specifically licensed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)”, before giving MLB the option to “seek a specific license from the OFAC”.
The agreement — initially reached in December — would have allowed Cuban players to sign with MLB teams, receive their full signing bonus, and the CBF would, in turn, receive an additional 25% of that bonus as a “release fee”.
This process would have all but negated the human-trafficking aspect of the dangerous terrain Cuban defectors have had to face in order to play Major League Baseball. Last Wednesday, the CBF released the names of the 34 players eligible to sign minor-league contracts.
Passan reports that Major League Baseball included the harrowing defection tales of Cuban players Yasiel Puig (whose story can be found here), Jose Abreu, Yoenis Cespedes, and many others, with hopes of swaying the Treasury Department’s ruling, apparently to no avail.
We’ll keep you posted as new information becomes available.
