Good to see everybody focused on a sixteen year old story that has already been investigated, and not the fact the fact he founded one of the largest charities in the US that gives away over 200 million dollars a year to the neediest people in the world. I am sure the charities you started give away much more than that, but 200 million ain’t hay.
Does it?
Does Forbes audit the charity or take their word for it? I mean, if they are claiming to be a charity then they will comport themselves as such and make their books and do their financial reporting and so on to appear to be a worthwhile charity.
Forbes grabbing the annual reports and making a list does not mean the company is doing what they say they are doing. They might well be but Forbes’ list does not really tell you that.
So if you were one of the contributors to Pat’s charity foundations, and donated because you thought it was a donation to “The Lord,” to do “The Lord’s work,” to help people in need, to feed them, house them and provide medical assistance, you wouldn’t be upset if your donation went instead to personally enrich Robertson with diamonds?
They are audited every year by an external auditor. Forbes based its ranking on that finding.
Here is the PDF of the 2012 audited financial report; KPMG was the auditor.
Are there any irregularities in that report that concern you?
But in which cases did that happen? As I understand it, Robertson used a plane he, personally, owned. Where, specifically, were donated dollars used in the manner you suggest?
Where do you think he got the dollars to buy a plane? From Social Security? Turning in deposit bottles?
Maybe. “…former aid workers at Operation Blessing, who describe how mercy flights to save refugees were diverted hundreds of miles from the crisis to deliver equipment to a diamond mining concession run by the televangelist.”
and
“The pilot said he joined Operation Blessing to help people. Of the 40 flights he flew into Congo, just two delivered aid.”
And this:
“The soil is unbelievable. You stick anything in the ground and it grows. You put a shovel in and it starts sprouting,” he said in appealing for donations.
In fact, the farm at Dumi had already failed. The soil was of poor quality and Operation Blessing brought seeds from the US unsuited to the region."
from this Guardian article: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/sep/05/mission-congo-pat-robertson-aid-rwanda
Auditors fail to detect fraud with alarming regularity. Just ask Arthur Anderson about Enron.
That does not mean KPMG is complicit but they would hardly be the first audit firm to miss stuff.
Further, does KPMG decide what is charity work? Is KPMG in Africa seeing the charity money spent? The documentary has numerous people saying they never saw any of the relief (or at least nearly none) this charity claims to have provided.
Oh, I have no doubt he was himself paid a generous sum by his ministries.
But those donations were not made to Operation Blessing. And anyone donating to the 700 Club would have no reason to believe they were NOT funding, among other things, a reasonably large salary for Robertson.
So the answer to your question is: Robertson’s plane ownership did not derive from money donated to Operation Blessing. This is certain, since he owned the plane before Operation Blessing came into existence. And I imagine that people donating to Roberson’s TV ministry were aware that Robertson was paid a large salary that came from their donations. But no one who donated money to Operation Blessing paid for the plane.
Sure, but at this point, the burden would be on you to show that they did indeed miss something.
I haven’t seen a penny of food stamp money, but I cannot, on that basis, claim the money is being misdirected.
Weren’t those the very allegations made in the 1990s, investigated by the Virginia Attorney General’s office, and dismissed?
Big deal. He gave away other people’s money. Something you deplore when liberals do it. If people gave me the money they’ve given Robertson, I could run a charity too. And I wouldn’t commit any crimes using the charity as cover either.
No but if the food stamp program said, “We spend $5 million/year in food stamps in neighborhood-X” it would be odd to go to that neighborhood and hear everyone there say they sure haven’t seen any of it.
Sure…there is a whole documentary making the case (see OP) that something is amiss here as well as a report from the state of Virginia saying there were “fraudulent and deceptive” claims.
So yeah…maybe something was “missed”. Maybe enough for a more thorough investigation by an impartial third party (i.e. not government officials beholden to Robertson’s money).
Huh? Does that political decision really hold a lot of weight for you? Did you also believe that West Virginia coal monster Don Blankenship was not guilty of using his influence to defraud, bully, and sabotage smaller coal mine owners out of business simply because his lawsuit was dismissed by the WVa supreme court? Because if you are that gullible, maybe you can find time to read this article describing how large donations and lobbies influence our political and court system. (In other words, the decision to dismiss charges of fraud by the VA AG office doesn’t prove to me that Robertson’s activities are above reproach.)
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-dark-lord-of-coal-country-20101129stop_mobi=yes&page=5#ixzz2ebug5TpI
"In 2004, he (Blakenship) spent $3 million — an enormous sum in West Virginia politics — to finance a political hit machine to take down Justice Warren McGraw, who was likely to serve as the swing vote in the court’s decision. The group deployed every sleazy trick in the book, accusing McGraw of letting child rapists out of prison and putting them to work in local schools. The smear tactics worked: McGraw was defeated, replaced by an industry-friendly judge backed by Blankenship. In 2007, the court overturned the $50 million verdict against Blankenship by a vote of 3 to 2. His $3 million investment had saved him $47 million.
snipped
… photographs of Blankenship and Spike Maynard, the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, vacationing together on the French Riviera. “The photos were visual evidence of what everyone suspected,” says Caperton. “Blankenship was again trying to influence the court.”
Let’s add in a few salient words:
He gave away other people’s money that they freely gave him for that purpose, something you deplore when liberals do it very inefficiently and with huge bureaucracies, through taxation.
For the record, I have no patience with Pat Robertson or his operations or his ilk. But your comment is an unfair political canard on an issue that doesn’t need it.
And your last sentence assumes as fact what is in dispute in this thread: did he in fact commit crimes under cover of this charity? Maybe, even probably (considering who we’re talking about) but I do not believe it has been proved.
Roddy
If Robertson had threatened to throw in prison everyone who gave him less than he thought they should your analogy would be apt. Every dollar Robertson’s charity raised was freely given.
People just did not give him the money, he built a ministry that gave him the ability to reach millions of people. He used that reach to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to help poor people all around the world. Ignoring all the good he has done while fixating on some mistakes he made almost twenty years ago shows a incredible lack of perspective.
Are you including spreading outrageous lies and encouraging the hatred and bigotry of homosexuals in the “good he has done”? You know, that positively evil rumor he broadcast one month ago? Pat Robertson Suggests Gays With AIDS Wear Rings To Cut, Infect Others | HuffPost Voices
Pat Robertson is so f’in evil that I hope that God in fact has just a bit of a vengeful streak and wants to punish Robertson for being so evil. As a Christian who does not believe in hell (and I’m quite skeptical about an afterlife), Robertson is about as evil as one gets without being a concerted serial murderer. Robertson makes Dick Cheney blush with envy.
I was responding the puddleglum’s accusation that Robertson is somehow morally superior to me because he gives away money through a charity and I don’t. I was pointing out that you don’t get as much moral credit for giving away other people’s money as you do for giving away your own.
Somebody might make the argument that Robertson deserves moral credit for setting up the charity and creating a means for people to give their money to needy people in Africa. And this was the second point I was addressing - Robertson deserves very little moral credit for setting up a charity if his primary goal was using it as a cover for his own financial gain.