SPLC Sequesters Donated Funds in Offshore Banks

Southern Poverty Law Center Transfers Millions in Cash to Offshore Entities
Left-wing nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to top management
BY: Joe Schoffstall

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal, Alabama-based 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization that has gained prominence on the left for its "hate group" designations, pushes millions of dollars to offshore entities as part of its business dealings, records show.

Additionally, the nonprofit pays lucrative six-figure salaries to its top directors and key employees while spending little on legal services despite its stated intent of "fighting hate and bigotry" using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is perhaps best known for its "hate map," a collection of organizations the nonprofit deems "domestic hate groups" that lists mainstream conservative organizations alongside racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and is often referenced in the media. A gunman opened fire at the Washington, D.C., offices of the conservative Family Research Council in 2012 after seeing it listed as an "anti-gay" group on SPLC's website.

The SPLC has turned into a fundraising powerhouse, recording more than $50 million in contributions and $328 million in net assets on its 2015 Form 990, the most recently available tax form from the nonprofit. SPLC's Form 990-T, its business income tax return, from the same year shows that they have "financial interests" in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, and Bermuda. No information is available beyond the acknowledgment of the interests at the bottom of the form.

However, the Washington Free Beacon discovered forms from 2014 that shed light on some of the Southern Poverty Law Center's transfers to foreign entities.

The SPLC's Form 8865, a Return of U.S. Persons With Respect to Certain Foreign Partnerships, from 2014 shows that the nonprofit 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.

No information is contained on its interests in Bermuda on the 2014 forms. SPLC's financial stakes in the British Virgin Islands were not acknowledged until its 2015 tax form.

Lucinda Chappelle, a principal at Jackson Thornton, the public accounting firm in Montgomery, Ala., that prepared the SPLC's tax forms, said she does not discuss client matters and hung up the phone when the Free Beacon contacted her in an attempt to get the most updated forms from the group in relation to its foreign business dealings.

Tax experts expressed confusion when being told of the transfer.

"I've never known a US-based nonprofit dealing in human rights or social services to have any foreign bank accounts," said Amy Sterling Casil, CEO of Pacific Human Capital, a California-based nonprofit consulting firm. "My impression based on prior interactions is that they have a small, modestly paid staff, and were regarded by most in the industry as frugal and reliable. I am stunned to learn of transfers of millions to offshore bank accounts. It is a huge red flag and would have been completely unacceptable to any wealthy, responsible, experienced board member who was committed to a charitable mission who I ever worked with."

"It is unethical for any US-based charity to invest large sums of money overseas," said Casil. "I know of no legitimate reason for any US-based nonprofit to put money in overseas, unregulated bank accounts."

"It seems extremely unusual for a ‘501(c)(3)' concentrating upon reducing poverty in the American South to have multiple bank accounts in tax haven nations," Charles Ortel, a former Wall Street analyst and financial advisor who helped uncover a 2009 financial scandal at General Electric, told the Free Beacon.

The nonprofit also pays lucrative salaries to its top leadership.

Richard Cohen, president and chief executive officer of the SPLC, was given $346,218 in base compensation in 2015, its tax forms show. Cohen received $20,000 more in other reportable compensation and non-taxable benefits. Morris Dees, SPLC's chief trial counsel, received a salary of $329,560 with $42,000 in additional reportable compensation and non-taxable benefits.

The minimum amount paid to an officer, director, trustee, or key employee in 2015 was $140,000 in base salary, not including other compensation. The group spent $20 million on salaries throughout the year.

The SPLC, which claims to boast a staff of 75 lawyers who practice in the area of children's rights, economic justice, immigrant justice, LGBT rights, and criminal justice reform, reported spending only $61,000 on legal services in 2015.

Following recent violence in Charlottesville, Va., the group raised a great deal of money.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told his employees that the company is donating $1 million to the SPLC and would match employee contributions two to one. Cook also placed an SPLC donation button in its iTunes store. The company is additionally providing a $1 million donation to the Anti-Defamation League.

J.P Morgan Chase vowed to add a $500,000 donation for the group's "work in tracking, exposing, and fighting hate groups and other extremist organizations."

The Washington Times reported that CNN ran a wire story following the Charlottesville events originally titled, "Here are all the active hate groups where you live" using SPLC's list of 917 groups.

Brad Dacus, the president of the Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based group that defends "religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties without charge," was listed on the "hate groups" list.

"Why is the Southern Poverty Law Center doing this? It's simple. They want to vilify and isolate anyone that doesn't agree with their very extremist leftist policy and ideology," Dacus told the Times. "This isn't about defending civil rights; this is about attacking civil rights."

"I am shocked that CNN would publish such a false report on the heels of the Charlottesville tragedy," added Mat Staver, the founder of Liberty Counsel, a Christian nonprofit that provides pro bono assistance and representation, which is also featured on SPLC's list. "To lump peaceful Christian organizations, which condemn violence and racism, in with the KKK, neo-Nazis, and white supremacists is offensive. This is the epitome of fake news and is why people no longer trust the media."

CNN later changed its headline to, "The Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups."

"The SPLC is an anti-conservative, anti-Christian hate group that the media have given pretend legitimacy to. One glance at their 990 tax forms is a reminder just what a fund-raising super-power it is," Dan Gainor, vice president of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, told the Free Beacon. "Its assets are over $328 million in 2015 and went up $13 million in just one year. It doesn't need new liberal money. It could operate for at least six years and never raise a penny. It's like a perpetual motion machine for fundraisers."

The SPLC has also been hit with a number of lawsuits over "hate" defamation claims in recent days.

The Southern Poverty Law Center did not return a request for comment on its foreign financial dealings by press time.

SPLC Doing What It Does Best: Spreading Hate & Inciting Violence

SPLC Says Army Bases Are Confederate Monuments That Need To Come Down

The Southern Poverty Law Center has declared three of America’s largest Army bases Confederate monuments “with the potential to unleash more turmoil and bloodshed” if activists don’t “take down” the Army bases.

The SPLC included Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Benning in Georgia on a list of 1,500 “Confederate monuments” that the SPLC claims could inspire more violence like what happened in Charlottesville, Virginia last month. All three bases are named after Confederate military leaders.

The list makes no mention of renaming namesakes of Confederate monuments; taking the monuments down is presented as the only option.

Having Trouble Getting Recognition From the SPLC

The Southern Poverty Law Center, aka SPLC, aka lying hate mongers for Leftist causes, did not list either me or this blog, after I reported myself and requested to be added to their list. Here's a copy of my request today:

I am very disappointed not to find myself on your hateful list after reporting myself a few weeks ago. I again request that you add me and my blog to your hateful list.
Stan,
atheism-analyzed.blogspot.com

I shall add this further damning information, should the SPLC decide to monitor the site: I am cis-white, cis-male, fully educated well before the Gramscian march through the institutions, not a Democrat, not a RINO, not an Atheist.

There. That should do it. Non-Leftist tribal identity should do the trick.

The HATE Group Called SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center)

The SPLC lists people they don't like, and sets them up for retributions such as shooting, boycotts, personal violence and other punishment by Leftist Goons.

The Hate Group That Incited the Middlebury Melee
By Carl M. Cannon
RealClear Politics
March 19, 2017

Under different circumstances, Alabama civil rights lawyer Morris S. Dees and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray might have been colleagues, even pals. Instead, Murray found himself in a near-riot at Middlebury College after accepting a speaking invitation from Republican students at the Vermont school. Students and faculty galvanized by Dees’ political organization barred Murray from speaking. They shouted him down, chanted their own manifesto, and pulled fire alarms to prevent him from being heard.

When Murray and Middlebury professor Allison Stanger tried to leave the building, they were followed by protesters who accosted them physically. The professor was grabbed by the hair and her neck twisted—she was fitted with a neck brace at a hospital—and their car rocked in a way that alarmed local authorities.

It was another victory for opponents of free speech, and if that seems like an incongruous scalp for a civil rights lawyer to wear, well, our politics are pretty odd these days.

Charles Murray is a political scientist with a doctorate degree from M.I.T. The American Enterprise Institute is a Washington-based think tank devoted to “defending human dignity, expanding human potential, and building a freer and safer world.” Its scholars believe these goals can be attained by promoting democracy and strengthening the free enterprise system in the U.S. and around the globe.

Morris Dees is a born salesman who was a committed capitalist before he entered elementary school. “When I was 5, I bought a pig for a dollar. I fattened it up and sold it for $12,” he once told People magazine. “I always had a feel for making money.”

When his mother sent him a fruitcake his freshman year in Tuscaloosa, Morris and classmate Millard Fuller wrote other students’ parents offering to deliver freshly baked birthday cakes. Soon they were selling 350 cakes per month. By the time they left law school, they were making $50,000 a year—$400,000 in today’s dollars.

After graduation, Dees and Fuller hung out a shingle and practiced law. But the real money came from their mail order business, peddling everything from cookbooks to tractor cushions. In 1969, Dees sold the direct-mail firm to the Times Mirror Co. for $6 million. By then, Fuller had cashed out, given away his money, and with his wife gone to live a Christian life building homes for the poor—efforts culminating in the creation of Habitat for Humanity.

Dees also started a nonprofit, which he named the Southern Poverty Law Center. But he gave up neither the high life nor the direct-mail business. He lives in luxury with his fifth wife and still runs the SPLC, which has used the mail-order model to amass a fortune. Its product line is an unusual one: For the past 47 years, Morris Dees has been selling fear and hate.

The business model is simple, albeit cynical, and best illustrated by its most famous case. In 1987, a Dees-led legal team won a $7 million judgment against the Ku Klux Klan in a wrongful death suit on behalf of Beulah Mae Donald, the mother of a 19-year-old kid murdered by members of the racist group. But the defendants’ total assets amounted to a building worth $52,000. That’s how much Mrs. Donald, who died the following year, received. But Dees reaped $9 million for the SPLC from fundraising solicitations about the case, including one showing a grisly photo of Michael Donald’s corpse.

Today, the center boasts a treasury of more than $300 million, the richest civil rights group in the country.

But with the Ku Klux Klan literally out of business, how was the SPLC able to frighten people into still donating? That’s where the AEI’s Charles Murray reenters our story, along with many other mainstream conservative groups. Scaring the bejesus out of people requires new bogeymen, and lots of them.

In recent years, you can find yourself on the SPLC’s “hate map” if you haven’t gotten fully aboard on gay marriage — or the Democratic Party’s immigration views. In other words, the Dees’ group classifies individuals and organizations as purveyors of “hate” for holding the same view on marriage espoused by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton until mid-2012.

Such labeling has consequences, which became clear in August 2012 when a gay rights activist named Floyd Lee Corkins entered the lobby of the Family Research Council armed with a 9mm handgun and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches. The gun was for killing as many Christians as he could, although he only managed to wound a guard. The sandwiches? He was going to rub them in the faces of his murder victims. Corkins had heard that a Chick-fil-A executive express opposition to gay marriage. Why the Family Research Council? He told police that the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled it “a hate group.”

This episode prompted the FBI to drop the SPLC as a resource for hate crime cases. It prompted no such soul searching in academia. Before Charles Murray’s abortive visit to Vermont, several hundred Middlebury alums signed a letter opposing his visit. They and the numerous professors and students who protested all cited the SPLC as their sole source for various slanders against Murray: He’s a racist; he favors eugenics; he’s a “white supremacist.”

Murry’s original sin is “The Bell Curve,” a book Murray co-authored more than two decades ago postulating a correlation between poverty and IQ. But it never advocated “eugenics.” Nor is he anti-gay: He’s argued in favor of gay marriage to Republican groups.

The “white supremacist” stuff is especially offensive: Murray, whose first wife was Asian, has mixed-race children.

No matter. The professors who admitted to Professor Stanger that they’d never read a word Murray had written led their students in the chants that drowned out whatever he planned to say at Middlebury.

While the anti-intellectual nature of this juvenile stunt is appalling, what’s worse is that college professors and students at an elite, expensive American college would outsource their thinking to an outfit like the SPLC. One of the professors’ talking points was that his “Bell Curve” research hadn’t been “peer reviewed.” That’s comical when one considers the shoddy nature of the SPLC’s dossiers. As liberal writer Ken Silverstein has noted, “the Law Center is essentially a fraud.”

The most scathing assessments of Dees and his group have always come from the left. Stephen B. Bright, a Yale law professor and president of the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, calls Dees a "shyster” and a “con man.” Bright’s primary complaint is that Dees does precious little litigation on behalf of poor people with the amount of money it pulls in. SPLC’s alarmist fundraising scams, shoddy collection of information, and longstanding practice of character assassination has been on the record for years—along with its “F” rating from the respected nonprofit watchdog group Charity Watch.

As long as it is reliably hyper-partisan—and the SPLC criticizes Republicans, not Democrats—the tenured twits in America’s faculty lounges can live with all that, I guess. That’s a disturbing enough thought. But what’s the mainstream media’s excuse? How can we continue to cite it as a source and then even pretend that we are non-partisan?

The American Enterprise Institute today is led by Arthur Brooks, whose passion is attacking poverty. He has interesting ideas about how it can be done, and a willing cohort of idealistic millennials on college campuses who might want to sign on. But with Dees’ disciples shouting and pulling fire alarms and roughing up visiting speakers—and with college professors who brag that they don’t expose themselves to another side of the argument—how will they even hear about it?

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington Bureau Chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.

I Have Submitted This Blog to the SPLC

It would make me proud to be hated by that hate group. I'm not sure why I didn't think of this before now.

If I am accepted, please join me on-line here for the huge celebration.

SPLC: Republicans Are White Supremacist Hate Group

Hate Group Defines a New Hate Group:

Republicans are America’s white-nationalist party now; Senators propose ‘NO HATE Act’; KKK rally planned in Asheboro; and more.

Foreign Policy: The GOP has become America’s white-nationalist party, as racists once confined to fringes take charge.

It's good to make their list; they list everyone who is NOT Leftist, One-Worlder, Marxist dictatorship oriented.

SPLC: Source For Hate Shooters