Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti charity was once a favorite among fellow celebrities. Matt Damon went to Haiti to do charity work with Jean in 2008, Angelina Jolie was once on the board of directors (I believe she left in the summer of 2010, although that’s hard to verify), and she even arranged for People Magazine to donate $500,000 to Yele Haiti in 2006 in exchange for the first photos of her pregnant with Shiloh. In early 2010, following the devastating earthquakes in the country, Yele Haiti was accused of mismanaging funds. Jean defended himself repeatedly and did a teary press conference denying that he’d personally benefited from the charity. In August, Jean ran for President of Haiti but was disqualified for not actually living in the country.

Well now the NY Post has poured over the public tax records for Yele Haiti and they say that not much has changed. Only a third of the money collected by the charity last year actually went to the emergency relief. Hundreds of thousands went to Jean’s brother-in-law’s company, and over a million went to a questionable contract with a company hat may not exist. Of course Jean is claiming this is taken out of context and the people involved have excuses for everything.

Wyclef Jean’s charity, Yele Haiti, is coming under scrutiny again for squandering millions of dollars in charitable donations.

The New York Post reported that the charity took in $16 million from donors in 2010, but only about a third went to fund emergency efforts. The paper also reported that $1 million went to a Florida company called Amisphere Farm Labor, Inc., that doesn’t appear to actually exist. The paper said the address listed for Amisphere is an auto body shop in Miami. The paper also said that Amsterly Pierre, the man who is purportedly Amisphere’s owner, bought three properties in Florida, including a waterfront condo in an upscale area.

“The Post conveniently fails to acknowledge that the decisions that Yele made were a response to one of the world’s most catastrophic natural disasters in modern history and required an immediate humanitarian response,” Jean said in a statement. “We made decisions that enabled us to provide emergency assistance in the midst of chaos and we stand by those decisions.”

Jean also noted that he was no longer part of Yele’s active leadership. “I have acknowledged that Yele has made mistakes in the past, including being late in IRS filings, but that is old news. When I entered politics last summer, I transitioned from being a board member and chairman of Yele Haiti to a supporter. The new and good news is that Yele under new leadership, despite efforts to undermine its credibility and effectiveness, continues its mission to serve people in need.”

Last year, the ex-Fugees rapper mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Haiti’s presidency. That electoral bid was dogged by allegations that Jean took money from Yele for his personal use, which he flatly denied. “Have we made mistakes before? Yes,” Jean said in a press conference last year. “Did I ever use Yele money for personal benefits? Absolutely not. Yele’s books are open and transparent.”

[From Huffington Post]

The Miami Herald has a new interview with Jean in which he claims that everyone is out to get him and that the NY Post didn’t give the full story. They also interviewed the guy who owns the “non-existent” company who got $1 million. That guy claims that the properties he bought in Florida were unrelated to the juicy contract with Yele Haiti, that he had to pay himself through that other shell company since the banks were closed or something, and that his firm provided hot meals in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake at the cost of $10 a plate.

“It’s starting to just be ridiculous. People on the Internet are asking: ‘What is it about this guy that y’all really don’t like?” Jean said in a telephone interview. “There are a lot of foul things going on on the ground in Haiti. The aid money promised, the earthquake relief, the idea of where are we going as a nation, the amount of money disbursed to big organizations, and the New York Post has mentioned nothing of that.”

Responding to the accusation that it only spent a third of its funding on emergency relief, former Yele President Hugh Locke said the organization deliberately decided to hold over a bulk of its 2010 contributions for use in 2011, rather than spend it all in a blitz of emergency projects.

Many charities working in Haiti were criticized in the months following the earthquake for collecting huge sums of money from donors and keeping most of it in the bank while aid projects were designed. Even the American Red Cross still has $153 million — about a third of what it raised in 2010 – left over for long term Haiti projects.

“I feel proud of what we did, and it irritates me to see people dump on it,” Locke said.

The newspaper also suggested that a Yele contractor, Miami-Dade county resident Amsterly Pierre, got a $1 million contract to distribute food, even though the firm “doesn’t seem to exist.” Pierre, the paper noted, bought three properties in 2010, including an upscale waterfront condo.

But Miami-Dade property records show Pierre’s bank documents for the property purchases were notarized before the earthquake, showing the sales were planned before the disaster. The deals closed in some cases just days after the quake.

“Why did they mention my properties?” Pierre said in a telephone interview from Haiti. “They published things that are not true. We are talking about 98,000 hot meals we provided, and the Yele people counted each plate and verified everything before they paid me.

“It’s not like one day they wrote a check for $1 million for hot food.”

Pierre used an inactive company he owns called Amisphere Farm Labor to receive payment from Yele, because Haiti’s banks were not functioning at the time, he said.

The company was paid $10 a plate for a portion large enough to serve two. Yele acknowledges that the price may have been high, but few non profits were taking the time to send contracts out for bid in the middle of an emergency.

“We did this Jan. 24 when there was still very little power in Haiti,” Locke said. “The United Nations did not start distributing food until I think March. At that time, they were doing helicopter distributions, which did not go very well. We were the only ones giving out hot meals.”

[From The Miami Herald]

I guess there are two sides to every story, but the fact that funds were so grossly mismanaged before, that they failed to file taxes for years, and that Jean’s brother-in-law scored a $353,983 contract, makes me question whether this charity is on the up and up. Here’s yet another example of why you should donate to reputable, established charities. I believe this guy’s heart is in the right place, but that he still had his hand in the coffers and made sure that he, and the people close to him, got paid.

These photos are from October, 2011. Credit: WENN.com