Posted on 06/29/2009 3:04:02 PM PDT by BGHater
As if the charities could pay it back. Nonsense.
Actually, the Taxpayer should make every Madoff investor whole. Not just what they put in, but their “profits” as well.
If charities invested directly in Madoff’s fraud, they should be subject to the same clawback rules as everyone else.
If they received contributions from people who invested with Madoff, withdrew the money, and gave it to charity, they are under no obligation whatsoever.
Lol. Thanks for the laugh.
“Actually, the Taxpayer should make every Madoff investor whole. Not just what they put in, but their “profits” as well.”
You must be a Madoff investor! Why should those of us that didn’t invest with the crook, pay his debts?
it is stolen property , so yes. And it should be by force.
what about the libs who took this crooks money??? did the NYSlimes ask this question??
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2008/12/15/madoff-hefty-political-contributions-politicians/
http://www.opensecrets.org/indivs/donor_lookup.php?name=madoff
How about politicians? Wasn’t he a large political contributor?
Why should you pay the debts of AIG and the rest of Wall Street? Why should you pay the debts of the auto companies? Why should you pay the debts of folks who can’t pay their mortgages
I’m just following existing logic....
At first I thought “of course not...” but upon reflection this is an interesting question. Anybody know if there’s any legal guidance on this sort of thing?
Indeed, but first we should pay reparations to the Blacks, give ALL property deeds over to the Native Americans and All whites should be imprisoned in the New Day Slave camps built by the now legal-illegal new co-owners of Afro-Mex America.
Heck, let’s go all the way....
;>)
I get that. But this is a different question. Because of the fraud in the execution of the “donation”, there’s a fair argument that it wasn’t his to give.
The tax-exempt dimension to Madoff's fraud is very fishy. Madoff was connected to numerous so-called tax-exempt " charities, and family foundations." The Robert I. Lappin Charitable Foundation, Steven Spielberg's tax-exempt Wunderkind Foundation, tax-exempt schools and synagogues---and more---all invested with Madoff.
NOW UNDER INVESTIGATION---The Chais Family Foundation; The Picower Foundation, (pulled out $5 BILLION just BEFORE the Madoff collapse).
The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt "foundations and charities" are the locus classicus for tax evasion, money laundering, and IRS fraud.
Investigators may be looking at the legal parameters of prosecutable crimes including making false statements to state and federal officials, filing falsified documents, obstruction of proceedings before state and federal agencies, fiduciary negligence, and obstruction of US justice.
The N/P's might have facilitated IRS fraud by integrating:
1. Secret control over N/P fund-raising committees.
2. Requiring only one signature on tax-exempt N/P bank checks.
3. Utilizing pre-signed tax-exempt bank checks.
4. Using secret bank accounts to keep secret the actual financial position of tax-exempt N/P's.
5. Assigning bank deposit and account reconciliation functions of tax-exempts to one person.
6. Conspiring to hide oversight of expenses and supporting vouchers from public view.
7. Having no outside auditor to review tax-exempt N/P's statements.
8. Cashing unusually large amounts of tax-exempt checks.
9. Having no official tax-exemp deposit and withdrawal control system.
Authorities should investigate the Madoff-invested tax-exempts's US Postal Service mailings, wire transfers, computer transfers, electronic submissions, and unregulated money transfers, and all bank transfers connected to secret tax-exempt non-profits’ bank accounts.
Fraudulent tax-exempt non-profit activities might have involved using checks passed from one account to another in multiple conspiracies to launder monies.
The stratagem could have been international in its scope due to Madoff's worldwide bank connections.
Authorities need to determine the extent to which donors to Madoff-invested N/P's colluded in schemes that may have included misusing reserve bank accounts, concealing transfers, inflating asset values and improperly accounting for transactions.
A formal inquiry should be conducted into the Madoff-invested tax-exempts and their financial activities with officers of publicly-held companies) including (1) Enron-style accounting frauds by manipulating N/P records, (2) bundling contributions into the pockets of politicians, (3) the extent to which networks of companies are financing political candidates in the names of business partners without their knowledge or consent, (4) the extent to which officers of publicly-held companies used accounting fraud to hide illegal campaign contributions, and, (5) the extent to which campaign donations exceeded campaign-finance limits.
Charges might include Madoff-invested tax-exempt charities' accounting managers misappropriating funds to cover personal expenses, fraudulently overcharging for management services, diverting non-profit funds, then converting them to campaign accounts, or in the style of WorldCom greed spending thousands of non-profit dollars on organization credit cards for personal expenses.
A formal inquiry should be undertaken with respect to the Madoff-invested N/P's relatives, associates, co-conspirators or subsets of them, and donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies), the business dealings between recipients, employees and elected and appointed officials and the extent to which influence-peddling is taking place, and more specifically the extent to which relatives, associates, and principles of the Madoff-invested foundations and charities and their co-conspirators or subsets of them, directed political activities from tax-free non-profit organizations in illegal arrangements.
The BIGGEST FRAUDS are between foundation and foundation .....writing checks to each other (which is the MO for laundering tax-exempt monies).
Authorities need to determine the extent to which the Madoff-invested charities manipulated philanthropic transactions, such as:
(1) loans, the (2) sale, (3) exchange or (4) leasing of property to related organizations, and donors, and the extent to which organizations reported (5) "excess benefit transactions" on Form 990, and, (6) the extent to which executive pay properly accounted for with the IRS.
The Madoff-invested charities need to reveal the dimension of contributions these organizations that may have been illegally redirected to political activity and be requested to explain:
(1) how the Madoff-invested charities solicit non-profit contributions,
(2) how non-profit donations are made, and,
(3) the manner in which donors to the Madoff-invested N/P's (particularly officers of publicly-held companies allocated company assets).
The Madoff-invested N/P's should be asked for details about who inside, and outside, these organizations is soliciting contributions, how the various subcommittees are funded, and the extent to which the Madoff-invested N/P's their donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) are colluding to perhaps finance political campaigns surreptitiously, and are engaging in other illegal transactions.
The landscape is littered with these "foundations and charities." Investigators need to determine why wealthy Brooklyn, NY residents registered some 800 tax-exempts in Lakewood-----a small flea-bitten central New Jersey town.
#4 seems to be a pretty succinct statement of the law.
Many “charities” are set up to protect family money and assure a steady income to family members. Some “charity” may result in the operation. There is no reason to treat these financial operations any different from other business entities.
We SHOULD pay reparations to blacks, actually.
Yes, they were slaves, and suffered systemic racism for decades in this country. They suffered lynchings and a whole host of discrimination in a variety of areas.
Each black family should be offered a free voucher for a container, to be shipped to their port of choice in Africa, and one way airfare, so they can meet their stuff.
In return, they must forfeit their US passports.
Except it doesn’t cover what I think is being referred to here as donations by Madoff himself (or his business) of fraudulently gotten money, to these charities.
I don’t know offhand if courts ever try to recover ill-gotten, donated funds. For example: if somebody robbed a bank and then donated all or some of the cash to a legitimate charity... would the court demand its return? I’m guessing that they would.
I vote YES, yes and yes. Oops, I seem to have voted more than once... oh well.
The trouble is, a small group of the largest Madoff investors were mysteriously getting very different returns from the bulk of the investors. Madoff was famous for modest but very, very steady returns, but Picower, for example, got 100% in one year and an astounding 950% in another year. There’s some evidence that he was able to call up Bernie and order up any return he wanted. At any rate, he certainly would have been well aware that this wasn’t the sort of return most Madoff investors were getting. So it appears that Picower was deliberately and knowingly participating in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, and then donating large amounts of the money to charities. I suspect a close look at the specific charities would find that many were institutions that were in position to steer valuable favors to big donors. Charities that were getting money via this sort of route should be made to cough it back up. On the other hand, charities that received modest donations from smaller Madoff investors who believed they were making the fairly modest returns Madoff was known for, are a different story — neither they nor the donors “knew or should have known” that something wasn’t on the up and up.
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