Augusta National and U.S.G.A. Drawn Into Justice Department Antitrust Inquiry
LONDON (AP) — The Justice Department has appointed a U.S.G.A. official as special counsel to gather information on allegations of anticompetitive behaviour at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has already had an official inquiry into the club, which is based in South Carolina, since at least 2004, but has not been as comprehensive as the special counsel’s investigation.
The new special counsel, David B. Barksdale, had been overseeing the FBI’s inquiry and will now focus on helping to get a more complete and probing investigation, according to the Justice Department’s statement released Thursday.
A former chairman of Augusta National, and the club’s owner, William Weitman, is named in the FBI’s report as a potential co-conspirator in the alleged Sherman Antitrust Act violation that has been at the centre of a decades-long investigation of the world’s most exclusive club.
A statement from Weitman’s lawyer, Scott S. Vigdor, said the report “contains many damaging revelations,” including allegations of “inappropriate conduct by management that goes back a decade.”
Weitman, a lawyer, owns more than 30 golf courses around the world and is the largest landowner in Georgia, which is located in his home state.
Weitman has previously made accusations of market manipulation made in the 1990s but he never named the club in his public statements.
In a letter to his lawyer, obtained by The Associated Press, Weitman blamed “certain members of the media” for not being “more careful before publishing inaccurate reports.”
On Aug. 3, a federal grand jury in Georgia indicted Weitman and several