Here is a little tidbit to start your week.
The IRS has asserted that tax-exempt " 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 charity might facilitate IRS fraud by integrating:
1. Taking 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 charity.
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 charity statements.
8. Cashing unusually large amounts of tax-exempt checks.
9. Having no official tax-exempt deposit and withdrawal control system.
Authorities should investigate Gates' 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.
Authorities need to determine the extent to which donors to Gates 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 Gates and his 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 Gates' 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 Gates 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 Gates charity, and his 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 Gates charity 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 Gates charity needs to reveal the dimension of contributions that may have been illegally redirected to political activity and be requested to explain: (1) how the Gates charity solicits non-profit contributions, (2) how non-profit donations are made, and, (3) the manner in which donors to Gates (particularly officers of publicly-held companies allocated company assets).
Gates should be asked for details about who inside, and outside, his organization is soliciting contributions, how the various subcommittees are funded, and the extent to which the Gates' donors (particularly officers of publicly-held companies) might be are colluding to perhaps finance political campaigns surreptitiously, and are engaging in other illegal transactions.