The Las Vegas Raiders had some unexpected turnover in their front office last offseason, and there were several theories about why the executives had to abruptly leave the organization. Team owner Mark Davis shed some light on the situation this week.
Marc Badain, who served as the Raiders’ team president for six-plus years, was among four executives who left the franchise. The others were CFO Ed Villanueva, Controller Araxie Grant, and vice president of strategy and business development Brandon Doll. Davis said this week that the resignations came after a series of “accounting irregularities.”
“I think it’s pretty much clear now, or I don’t know if it is clear now, but it was pretty much accounting irregularities,” Davis said, per Vic Tafur of The Athletic. “That’s why the CFO left, the controller left and the president left, that’s what it was.”
There had been speculation that the Raiders were having issues with the IRS and had been hit with a significant tax bill. Davis said the opposite was true.
“I will say it wasn’t not paying enough taxes — we overpaid our taxes, that’s one of the good things about it,” the owner said.
The Raiders reportedly launched an internal investigation into whatever it was that was going on. It’s possible that the issues stemmed from the revenue the team lost as a result of the pandemic. Perhaps that was not properly accounted for, or perhaps there was some funny business going on. We may never know.
One thing is for sure — the mass exodus was extremely unusual. There is probably more to the story than simple clerical errors.
