U.S. allows transactions with two Venezuelan baseball teams

CARACAS (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury Department has granted licenses allowing transactions with two Venezuelan baseball teams, the local Baseball League and two sources said on Friday.

The move will let the teams in the sanctioned and baseball-loving South American country contract players from the U.S. during their off season.

In November 2019, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) authorized transactions with six of the eight teams in the Venezuelan baseball league, allowing them to bring in Venezuelan and foreign major league players.

The teams left out at the time were Navegantes de Magallanes, whose headquarters is in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, and Tigres de Aragua, from the city of Maracay.

The Venezuelan Professional Baseball league(LVBP) announced via Twitter on Friday that both teams received licenses from OFAC.

The decision comes just weeks before the start of the baseball season in Venezuela.

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

OFAC "issued the licenses on Friday and they are in the hands of the teams' lawyers," a source linked to the Venezuelan league added.

"People are no longer going to deprived of seeing their stars. ... Now they will be uniformed here," said Oscar Henriquez, president of the sports committee of Tigres de Aragua.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas in Caracas and Mircely Guanipa in Maracay; Editing by Leslie Adler)