Wyclef Haiti Charity Under Fiscal Scrutiny/ Hear His Reponse!

The Washington Post reported that by Friday morning, just days after the earthquake hit, Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti Foundation had raised more than $1.5 million.

Groups that vet charities are raising doubts about the organization backed by Haitian-born rapper Wyclef Jean, questioning its accounting practices and ability to function in earthquake-hit Haiti. Even as hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into The Wyclef Jean Foundation Inc. via text message, experts questioned how much of the money would help those in need.

”It’s questionable. There’s no way to get around that,” said Art Taylor, president and chief executive of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance.

Undoubtedly, Jean's celebrity helped draw in donors: He's an internationally known musician from Haiti who won a Grammy with the Fugees and went on to a hugely successful solo career. But an analysis of the charity's tax returns raises questions about how it has spent money in the past, with administrative expenses that appear to be higher than comparable charities and payments to businesses owned by the musician and a board member, including $100,000 for a performance by Jean at a 2006 benefit concert.

"It seems clear that a significant amount of the monies that this charity raises go for costs other than providing benefits to Haitians in need," said Dean Zerbe, national managing director of Alliant Group, a tax services company, and the former tax counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees charities.

The concerns were first reported on The Smoking Gun Web site.

"It brings real caution for donors that want to help in Haiti that they might want to take a harder look at this organization but also consider the significant number of charities that have been doing good work in Haiti that don't have these question marks," Zerbe said.

Hugh Locke, president of Yele Haiti, said the charity does what others can't, because Jean gives it unusual access to the country's slums. He said the group hopes to spend a higher percentage of its budget on services as it gains experience. "I think people should be very comfortable that any money given to Yele Haiti is going 100 percent to emergency relief."

The earthquake prompted so much donor interest in Yele Haiti that its Web site crashed Thursday. Yele Haiti also is getting much publicity at events, including a fundraiser Monday at the 9:30 Club and a telethon next Friday hosted by actor George Clooney. It is collecting supplies Sunday in Miami and airlifting them to Port-au-Prince next week, Locke said.
The charity provides scholarships, funds a soccer team, takes students on environmental-education camping trips and employs women to cook for schools, according to Yele Haiti. After a 2008 storm, it helped a food program distribute emergency rations to 6,000 families without violence, Locke said, organizing the community to distribute the food rather than sending in aid workers with armed guards.
But its financial records raise questions, experts say. In 2006, Yele Haiti had about $1 million in revenue, according to tax documents. More than a third of the money went to payments to related parties, said lawyer James Joseph, who specializes in nonprofit issues.
"It might be completely legitimate. But it's certainly something I would want to look into more carefully," Joseph said.

For instance, the charity recorded a payment of $250,000 to Telemax, a TV station and production company in Haiti in which Jean and Jerry Duplessis, both members of Yele Haiti's board of directors, had a controlling interest. The charity paid about $31,000 in rent to Platinum Sound, a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean and Duplessis. And it spent an additional $100,000 for Jean's performance at a benefit concert in Monaco. Locke said that Jean and Duplessis were unavailable for comment Friday.

The Telemax money was used for "everything from public-service announcements to educational programming," said Jesse Derris of the public relations firm Sunshine, Sachs and Associates, which is representing Yele Haiti. They used their own company "because it was a way to buy time at a significant discount."
The rent included office space and shared receptionist services for the charity and is "severely reduced" below market rate, Derris said. All the proceeds of the benefit concert went directly to Yele Haiti, he said. Locke said the $100,000 included expenses, such as payments to backup musicians and production costs.

Yele Haiti reported nearly $1.9 million in income on its 2008 tax return.


Wyclef Jean recently heard these comments and responded in a YouTube statement:




ALSO CHECK HIM OUT GETTING INTERVIEWED IN HAITI PRIOR TO THIS MESSAGE:

Haiti's Earthquake Death Toll Over 100,000/ Wyclef Raises Over $400,000/ Pat Robertson Says Haiti Has "Pack w/ The Devil" [PHOTOS + VIDEOS INCLUDED]

Rescue workers struggle to clear rubble and bodies from the streets of Haiti's "flattened" capital, where a government official said the death toll from Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude earthquake may exceed 100,000.

Thousands of injured people waited for care outside badly damaged hospitals, while an unknown number remained trapped inside collapsed buildings. Basic services like water and electricity were out, and Haitian President Rene Preval said his government needs help clearing streets so rescuers can reach some of the hardest-hit areas.





"We need medicine. We need medical help in general," Preval told CNN. "Some of the hospitals, they collapsed."

Phone lines are down as well. So it is extremely difficult to those not in Haiti to speak with their loved ones.




The Dominican Republic was the first country to give aid to Haiti in the aftermath of Tuesday's devastating earthquake. They set aside historic tensions, rushes heavy equipment to Haiti to help remove earthquake debris.

Superstar musician Wyclef Jean, a native of Haiti, has helped raise over $400,000 for his native country, thanks to text-message donations. Jean and the Miami-based Give On The Go campaign joined forces to encourage people from around the world to send a text message of "Yele" to 501501 on their mobile device which would then charge $5 to the donor's cellular phone bill.

Responding to the devastation from the Haiti earthquake, Obama administration officials on Wednesday temporarily suspended deportations of illegal immigrants from that country.

While still helping the relief, there are others that may say Haiti's energy and old ways may have caused this. American televangelist, Pat Robertson, has everyone wide eyed as some of his recent comments on the quake. Robertson said Haiti has had a "pack with the devil" for years while commenting on CBN News. You can watch the video below.




AGAIN, TO HELP GET RELIEF TO HAITI PLEASE TEXT "Yele" to 501501 to donate $5.