Print
Email
As disaster relief pours into Haiti, The Smoking Gun takes a look at Yele, the aid organization founded by Wyclef Jean [12]. Their books appear to be...suspect
Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean's appearance at a benefit concert. Though the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which does business as Yele Haiti Foundation, was incorporated 12 years ago--and has been active since that time--the group only first filed tax returns in August 2009. That month, the foundation provided the IRS with returns covering calendar years 2005, 2006, and 2007--the only periods for which it has publicly provided a glimpse at its financial affairs.
...
As seen on the following pages from the foundation's 2006 tax return, the group paid $31,200 [13] in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Jerry Duplessis, who, like Jean, is a foundation board member. A $31,200 rent payment was also made in 2007 to Platinum Sound. The rent, tax returns assure, "is priced below market value." [14] The recording studio also was paid $100,000 [15] in 2006 for the "musical performance services of Wyclef Jean at a benefit concert." That six-figure payout, the tax return noted, "was substantially less than market value." [16] The return, of course, does not address why Jean needed to be paid to perform at his own charity's fundraiser. But the largest 2006 payout--a whopping $250,000 [17]--went to Telemax, S.A., a for-profit Haiti company in which Jean and Duplessis were said to "own a controlling interest."
Hmmmmmm...
Comments