NYT: In Haiti, Little Can Be Found of a Hip-Hop Artist’s Charity

[69 others]

The forensic audit examined $3 million of the charity's 2005 to 2009 expenses and found $256,580 in illegitimate benefits to Mr. Jean and other Yéle board and staff members as well as improper or potentially improper transactions. These included $24,000 for Mr. Jean's chauffeur services and $30,763 for a private jet that transported Lindsay Lohan from New Jersey to a benefit in Chicago that raised only $66,000.

The audit considered it appropriate, though, for the charity to pay Mr. Jean $100,000 to perform at a Yéle fund-raiser in Monaco because that was his market rate. It also found it acceptable for Yéle to spend $125,114 on travel and other matters related to a "60 Minutes" report on "Wyclef's mission to help the people of Haiti and his personal success story" because it appeared to have heightened awareness of Yéle. It was deemed legitimate to have spent $57,927 on private jets to fly Matt Damon and others to Haiti because they gave "substantial contributions" afterward.

Even as Yéle is besieged by angry creditors, an examination of the charity indicates that millions in donations for earthquake victims went to its own offices, salaries, consultants' fees and travel, to Mr. Jean's brother-in-law for projects never realized, to materials for temporary houses never built and to accountants dealing with its legal troubles.

On the ground in Haiti, little lasting trace of Yéle's presence can be discerned. The walled country estate leased for its headquarters, on which the charity lavished $600,000, is deserted. Yéle's street cleaning crews have been disbanded. The Yéle-branded tents and tarps have mostly disintegrated; one camp leader said they had not seen Yéle, which is based in New York, since Mr. Jean was disqualified as a presidential candidate because he lives in Saddle River, N.J., not Haiti.

...

In 2010, Yéle spent $9 million and half went to travel, to salaries and consultants' fees and to expenses related to their offices and warehouse. In contrast, another celebrity charity, Sean Penn's J/P Haitian Relief Organization, spent $13 million with only 10 percent going to those costs.

Though Mr. Penn's group spent $43,000 on office-related expenses, Yéle spent $1.4 million, including $375,000 for "landscaping" and $37,000 for rent to Mr. Jean's Manhattan recording studio. Yéle spent $470,440 on its own food and beverages.

Some of Yéle's programming money went to projects that never came to fruition: temporary homes for which it prepaid $93,000; a medical center to have been housed in geodesic domes for which it paid $146,000; the revitalization of a plaza in the Cité Soleil slum, where supposed improvements that cost $230,000 are nowhere to be seen.

There were questionable contracts, too: Mr. Jean's brother-in-law, Eric Warnel Pierre, collected about $630,000 for three projects including the medical center and the plaza - what Yéle's tax forms called "the rebuilding of Haiti." Mr. Pierre did not respond to messages left for him.

And a Miami company called Amisphere Farm Labor, incorporated in 2008 and dissolved in 2009, received $1 million in 2010 to provide hot meals to displaced Haitians. Yet a Haitian caterer has sued Yéle for $430,000 in nonpayment for these very same meals, thus far succeeding only in getting the charity's Haitian bank account frozen.

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/world/americas/quake-hit-haiti-gains-little-as-wyclef-jean-charity-spends-much.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1

 

[Da King]

this the same dude who asked to be paid 100k for charity concert, what did you expect?

 

[Juneya]

clown ass nikka embarrassed himself... forever tarnished his reputation

 

[bewitched]

Shame that all that promotion for donations on every major network for the earthquake destruction did not properly aid the people in Haiti but instead went to make Wyclef's and his associates pocket's fat. I actually admired how he worked to raise awareness of the plight of Haitian's even before the Earthquake but it seems Sean Penn's organization is the one that's providing the proper aid to the country. Shame.

 

[Tom]

This is why black people shouldn't be in charge of anything.


If any one of u were in Clef's position you probably would have spent the majority of the charity money on jordans and cellphones

 

[thekingsmen]

Sadly none of the money through charity and non-profit organization work for Haiti went to Haiti. Red Cross got away big time with donation funds for Katrina and did it again for Haiti.

 

[Chris.B]

Wyclef is a fraud. No surprise here.

 

[Prince Akeem]

Wyclef is a fukk nikka but we all knew this.

 

[Amestafuu (Emeritus)]

This is why black people shouldn't be in charge of anything.


If any one of u were in Clef's position you probably would have spent the majority of the charity money on jordans and cellphones

Your either a c00n or a CAC... but an idiot non the less. Stop speaking on behalf of black people everywhere... what kinda backward self hating clown shyt are u saying. fakkit

 

[Prince Akeem]

Your either a c00n or a CAC... but an idiot non the less. Stop speaking on behalf of black people everywhere... what kinda backward self hating clown shyt are u saying. fakkit

Any properly run forum would have banned him already.

People like him drag down the whole board.

This place is actually worse than sohh in that re guard.

 

[GetInTheTruck]

knew that yele haiti was full of shyt...what a shame.

 

[feelosofer]

I want to reserve judgement on this but clearly Wyclef had bad judgement in terms of the middlemen he used to run this charity, I hope he comes out of it ok, but it saddens me greatly especially since my company worked with Yele, during the earthquake crisis.

 

[88m3]

I hope he dies he's what's wrong in the world; the greed, the personality, the attitude, the ego I hope he meets a brutal end.

 

[RhymesWell]

Growing up, one of my uncles went on the smoking grooves tour with the Fugees and other s around 96-98 (can't remember, I'm 24 now, so I was pretty young at the time). But anyway, he always told me that he hated Wyclef and that Clef was an a$$hole. Mind you, we're haitian so as a kid I worshipped the Fugees because they were the only haitian faces I saw on tv. So I'm not surprised at all by this fukkery.

 

[Brock Landers]

And yet dude had the audacity to come at Sean Penn like that