Monday, August 01, 2005
Air Deadbeat
The top executive at a Bronx youth organization said yesterday that the former director of Air America Radio received more than $800,000 in loans for himself and the radio network from the nonprofit organization while serving as its development director.
Some of the transfers, according to the president of the Bronx-based Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club organization's executive committee, Jeannette Graves, occurred when the development director, Evan Montvel Cohen, who for a time served simultaneously as the liberal radio network's director, appealed to the organization for two loans worth $35,000. Another member of the executive committee said Mr. Cohen told the executive director of the organization that he needed the money to pay for chemotherapy for himself and other medical expenses for his ill father.
Ms. Graves said that Mr. Cohen also received another $213,000 loan for Air America in a check that was approved without her authorization and stamped with an imprint of her signature, and that the club wired more than $400,000 to him without her knowledge.
Bizarrely, New York's Attorney General Elliot Spitzer hasn't found the time to look into this very troubling corporate governance crisis right in his own, er, actual jurisdiction. And it can't be that he has missed the story (notwithstanding the silence of the Times), since Hugh Hewitt has notified him of it. Hugh and a vast legion of commenters on his blog.
You will never hear this from the left, but it is absolutely the case that non-profit corporations have always had far shoddier and more conflicted business practices than our public companies.
4 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Mon Aug 01, 06:10:00 PM:
From the left:
Non-profit corporations have always had far shoddier and more conflicted business practices than our public companies.
I couldn't agree more. Churches are a prime example.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Aug 01, 06:37:00 PM:
No argument there. But lots of big activist groups and NGOs are a mess. I know a guy who got in litigation with one of the state Audobon Societies up in New England. Among other facts revealed in that case were that the president of the friggin' state Audobon Society was paid $800,000 per year. And people think CEOs are overpaid.
By geoffrobinson, at
Mon Aug 01, 06:38:00 PM:
I'm not sure about your churches comment. Not sure about secular non-profits as well.
I think any sort of port authority should be audited frequently.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Aug 01, 07:13:00 PM:
Most non-profits, including churches, are not so much corrupt as they are sloppy. And many small churches, I am sure, are so strapped for cash that they are careful out of necessity. I am confident in my speculation, though admittedly without knowing for sure, that many large religious organizations and secular non-profits have weaker internal controls than for-profit public corporations.
