Warning: don't donate to these two corrupt Haiti NGOs

I’ve spotted two Haiti-oriented NGOs that readers should stay away from, for reasons of corruption. Simply put, not enough money given to these NGOs actually winds up helping Haitians – too much is spent on lavish luxuries for NGO staff and managers.

Yele Haiti

The first is Wyclef Jean’s Yele Haiti foundation. Jean is a Haitian-American pop singer, most famous for his work with the band The Fugees. May I recommend his song by the same name as his NGO, Yele. Here’s the heart-breaking and heart-warming video:

That fortress in the video, by the way, is the Citadelle Laferrière, the largest citadel in the Americas.

I love Wyclef Jean’s sound, but I wouldn’t give a cent to his charity. Jean has been ubiquitous these past weeks raising money for Haiti, and no doubt his tears are real. But financial records from Yele Haiti show that Jean has made sure the first person to get paid from Yele Haiti events was himself – including a staggering $100,000 fee for him to perform at one of his own events (that benefit was cancelled because of his demands) and other gigs that poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into companies he controlled. Here’s one where he took nearly $100,000 out of $150,000 raised. Even if Jean’s fading star could still fetch that on the open market (he can’t – here’s a contract showing he performs for a fraction of that), it’s still outrageous that people donating to Yele Haiti are told the money is going to help Haitians, when the poor Haitian benefiting the most is Wyclef himself.

Best to take Jean for who he is – a talented musician who has helped spread the Haitian creole sound around the world – but put your trust (and money) into accredited charities that take only a modest sum for administration and overhead. The Red Cross is probably your best bet.

Rights and Democracy

Another corrupt NGO that donors should stay away from is Rights and Democracy (R&D), the ironically-named Canadian government-funded NGO that has recently been rocked by scandal for donating money to a Palestinian terrorist.

R&D has a Haiti program, but like Yele Haiti, an inordinate amount of money received by R&D is spent on their own jet-setting staff. Here's a 22-page internal audit memo from just two years ago, for example, that looks into a raft of corruption allegations – and unfortunately finds many of them to be true. The review, conducted by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Foreign Affairs found “weak internal controls” over money.

For example, on a junket to Cairo, R&D staff racked up over $5,000 in expenses like booze, mini-bar booze, and booze at the pool. The review actually had all three of those categories of booze (see page 7). Page 11 of the review shows that board members funneled money to their pet organizations and that large contracts are being handed out without public tender, in violation of the "rules". And the president of R&D billed for 46 nights in Paris – not bad considering R&D didn’t have any business there. For comparison, he only spent 42 nights in Ottawa.

Page 13 outlines widespread labour-management strife and low morale, going back years; page 16 notes more than a dozen staff fired and 65 labour union grievances; page 18 refers to harassment of staff by management. Bitchiness alone isn’t a reason not to donate to an NGO; but lavish expenses and a lack of financial controls is. This broken corporate culture has been going on for years, but has only recently received media coverage, largely due to the staff's rebellion against a new, anti-corruption-oriented board.

Conclusion: if you’re an individual donor and want to help Haiti, don’t give your money to Yele Haiti. And if you’re a government shoveling $11 million out the door each year to a sullen staff who think that taking boozy trips to Cairo or Paris counts as “international development”, you may wish to direct your funds elsewhere, too.