It was Voltaire who observed that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. You can look it up. Unlike the Southern Poverty Law Center, however, it wasn’t a fraud from the name on down. The SPLC is.
The Department of Justice has secured an indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the Middle District of Alabama (Montgomery, the SPLC’s home base). The indictment is posted online here. It alleges six counts of wire fraud and four counts of false statements to a federally insured bank.
The Department of Justice has posted a related press release. Below is video of the press conference conducted by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel.
The indictment alleges activities undertaken by the SPLC over the past ten years. I’ve been writing about the SPLC for almost that long, if not longer. Let me take a look back.
This is adapted from what I wrote in 2017:
We’ve had the number of the ludicrously misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center for a long time. It is a vastly influential left-wing hate cult operating in the form of a nonprofit fundraising phenom most famous for its supposed “hate map” and related designations. As such, it recalls the old joke about the Holy Roman Empire. It’s is neither poor nor devoted to law, though I would concede it’s based in Montgomery and may even be a center of something or other.
It’s not just rich. To borrow a phrase I first found in Boswell’s Life of Johnson, it has grown rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
The Washington Free Beacon took a look at the SPLC’s most recent (2015) Form 990. It found more than $50 million in contributions and $328 million in net assets. Its business income tax return, from the same year shows that they have “financial interests” in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda.
Well, that piqued the Free Beacon’s interest. Pursuing the issue in a 2014 tax document, the Free Beacon found that the SPLC transferred hundreds of thousands to an account located in the Cayman Islands:
SPLC lists Tiger Global Management LLC, a New York-based private equity financial firm, as an agent on its form. The form shows a foreign partnership between the SPLC and Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P., a pooled investment fund in the Cayman Islands. SPLC transferred $960,000 in cash on Nov. 24, 2014 to Tiger Global Private Investment Partners IX, L.P, its records show.
The SPLC’s Form 926, a Return by a U.S. Transferor of Property to a Foreign Corporation, from 2014 shows additional cash transactions that the nonprofit had sent to offshore funds.
The SPLC reported a $102,007 cash transfer on Dec. 24, 2014 to BPV-III Cayman X Limited, a foreign entity located in the Cayman Islands. The group then sent $157,574 in cash to BPV-III Cayman XI Limited on Dec. 31, 2014, an entity that lists the same PO Box address in Grand Cayman as the previous transfer.
The nonprofit pushed millions more into offshore funds at the beginning of 2015.
On March 1, 2015, SPLC sent $2,200,000 to an entity incorporated in Canana Bay, Cayman Islands, according to Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) records and run by a firm firm based in Greenwich, Ct. Another $2,200,000 cash transfer was made on the same day to another fund whose business is located at the same address as the previous fund in the Cayman Islands, according to SEC records.
What does it all mean? The Free Beacon turned to Amy Sterling Casil for comment. Casil is CEO of a consulting firm for nonprofits. She found the SPLC’s offshore approach unusual: “I’ve never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts,” she said. The Free Beacon has much more here, all of it of interest.
Jeryl Bier followed up on the Free Beacon’s groundbreaking report with this salient fact: “The Southern Poverty Law Center has $69 million parked overseas.” Bier secured statements from SPLC president Richard Cohen and SPLC financial adviser Cambridge Associates. They assured him that this is all par for the course. (Bier had more here in 2019.)
That’s one rich “poverty law center” they’ve got there. The recent contributions to SPLC announced by by Apple and JPMorganChase (noted in the Free Beacon article) constitute little more than a glorified form of corporate waste by which management can bask in the warmth of its self-love.
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This is adapted from what I wrote this in 2019 on the occasion of the disgrace of SPLC co-founder Morris Dees:
When Morris Dees spoke at the St. Paul Jewish Community Center back in the 1990s, I walked out on him. He was ragging on George H.W. Bush at the time in an absurdly partisan and otherwise dishonest manner. Even though he had drawn a relatively large crowd, he saw me leaving and commented on it. He seemed to take pleasure in it. I thought he was a gratingly obvious fraud.
Dees is the co-founder of the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center. The group’s name is as misleading as that of the Holy Roman Empire. It is a ridiculously wealthy left-wing hate cult operating in the guise of a civil rights organization. The organization now serves as a handmaiden to forces of the left as they seek to stigmatize conservatives and confine our public discourse to channels and writers or speakers approved by them. Nice work if you can get it (and they get it).
The organization has now unceremoniously canned Dees. The Montgomery Advertiser has a good story on his firing here. I infer from the group’s public statement quoted by the Advertiser that Dees was found to have committed some kind of workplace harassment:
“As a civil rights organization [sic], the SPLC is committed to ensuring that the conduct of our staff reflects the mission of the organization and the values we hope to instill in the world,” [SPLC president Richard] Cohen said in the emailed statement. “When one of our own fails to meet those standards, no matter his or her role in the organization, we take it seriously and must take appropriate action.”
One can also draw inferences from this part of Cohen’s statement:
“Today we announced a number of immediate, concrete next steps we’re taking, including bringing in an outside organization to conduct a comprehensive assessment of our internal climate and workplace practices, to ensure that our talented staff is working in the environment that they deserve — one in which all voices are heard and all staff members are respected[.]”
The disgrace of Dees is long overdue but it’s not enough. The group should follow up by closing its doors and liquidating its assets for distribution to truly charitable organizations, which SPLC is not.
