A leader of the charity campaign group, Black Lives Matter has been accused by branches of the organization of stealing $10 million in donations to use for personal spending.
Shalomyah Bowers who was a former board member of the BLM Global Network (BLMGNF) has been using millions of dollars of donations and funding which had been sent to the registered charity by the public as a “personal piggy bank”, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday by Black Lives Matter Grassroots (BLMGR).
The organization, which has come under fire numerous times as scandal after scandal has emerged regarding its leaders’ dubious spending habits, raked in around $90 million in donations in 2020 alone.
In a statement about the lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles, BLMGNF said that the allegations were “harmful, divisive and false” and went on to accuse leaders of the grassroots section of the organization of awarding themselves “$10,000 monthly stipends” with money that was supposed to go to help struggling black families.
The Global Network is the national body of the group which oversees the regional Grassroots sections, similar to a political party. The BLMGNF is also responsible for allocating an allowance to each regional chapter. As the truth behind the group’s spending habits seeps out, those involved are frantically pointing the finger, all the while accusing each other of supporting “white supremacy”.
It comes as BLM chiefs have faced numerous questions about multimillion-dollar mansions they’ve purchased for themselves using public donations which began to flood in after the murder of black criminal, George Floyd by a cop.
In May 2021, it was revealed that BLM’s co-founder Patrisse Cullors, 38, had splashed out on a $1.4 million home in a glitzy LA neighborhood and had dished out $26,000 for ‘meetings’ at a luxurious Malibu resort.
The new lawsuit which was brought on by BLMGR California leader, Walter Mosley, names board member, Bowers who was appointed by Cullors in 2020, and refers to him as a “rogue administrator, a middle man turned usurper”.
In a new lawsuit, BLM leader Shalomyah Bowers is being accused of stealing $10 million from the organization pic.twitter.com/8qzi911TTd
— No Jumper (@nojumper) September 5, 2022
Mosley is a lawyer who represented Black Chyna in a lawsuit against Kim Kardashian in 2018. He founded the BLMGR California group around three months ago.
According to reports, Bowers paid his own consulting firm $2 million out of BLMGNF funding in 2020:
“While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM,” reads the lawsuit.
Grassroots leader, Melina Abdullah said that the national body had become too distanced from its core purpose:
“Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been taken away from the people who built it,” said Abdullah.
“Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is now led by a highly paid consultant who paid himself upward of $2 million in a single year.”
But BLMGNF hit back at Grassroots’ accusations and said that its organizers were making way for “white supremacy”:
“They would rather take the same steps of our white oppressors and utilize the criminal legal system which is propped up by white supremacy (the same system they say they want to dismantle) to solve movement disputes.”
By this one can only assume that by “white supremacy”, BLM leaders actually mean “any white person who has more money than we do”.
Tax filings revealed that the group had around $42 million in assets from July 2020 to June 2021. Around $6 million was spent on a sprawling estate in Los Angeles.
The six-bed home includes a luxurious swimming pool, a recording studio, and office space – but BLM chiefs say the mansion was intended to be used for struggling black artists and musicians.
A further $8 million of BLM funding was forked out for another mansion in Toronto.
This story syndicated with permission from Jo Marney, Author at Trending Politics
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