Nearly two years after a record-breaking earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people and left a million more homeless in Haiti, a popular charity led by former rapper Wyclef Jean is still dodging questions about its relief spending.
Yele, a charitable organization Jean founded in 2005, was accused in a New York Post story of only spending a “pittance” of the $16 million it raised on emergency relief. The paper said the group spent “millions in questionable contracts,” but only cited a few, and offered little evidence that money had actually been misspent.
“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.”
He disputed the paper’s account that the organization paid $35,000 monthly in rent. It paid $15,000 for a seven-acre property where the Yele operations were based, he said.
Locke also defended the $353,983 construction contract given to Jean’s brother-in-law Warnel Pierre.
“Why should all of Wyclef’s relatives be automatically excluded?” Locke said. “What is the problem if you can show the complete outcome?”
But he acknowledged that the Post report is not the first time the charity faces questions of dubious spending.
Last year, the New York Times reported that the organization paid $250,000 in advance for celebrity videos and airtime to a TV station Jean owns. Prior reports accused Yele of paying Jean for performances and noted that the group was several years behind on reporting its taxes.
The organization changed its board of directors and hired a new director. Jean, who was disqualified in his bid for the presidency of Haiti last year, also quit the board.
CEO Derek Johnson said the Post article failed to mention that the organization purchased the country’s first publicly available CT scanner, fed more than 100,000 people and runs a jobs program.
“Yele is not unlike any other not-for-profit that has made mistakes,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, this is a business where you don’t necessarily get the benefit of the doubt.”
Jean stressed that the group posts much of its financial information on the Internet, and that the information from the Post report came from facts Yele provided on its tax forms.
“We’ve worked on transparency, we’ve worked on governance,” he said. “But that’s not a juicy story.”
