The leader of the national Black Lives Matter group has been accused of stealing more than $10 million from the charity’s donors.
Black Lives Matter Grassroots, a nonprofit group that represents local BLM chapters across the country, accused the BLM Global Network Foundation and its board secretary, Shalomyah Bowers, in a lawsuit Thursday of fraudulently siphoning over $10 million in “fees” to Bowers’s consulting firm. The lawsuit, which was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, says Bowers treated the BLM Global Network Foundation as his “personal piggy bank” and has acted as a “rogue administrator” and “middle man turned usurper.”
The BLM Global Network Foundation represents the national BLM movement and was the entity that received over $90 million in the wake of George Floyd’s police killing in the summer of 2020. Bowers is a close associate of BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who resigned from the BLM Global Network Foundation in May 2021 amid scrutiny of her personal real estate purchases.
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The lawsuit was announced Thursday at a press conference hosted by BLM-Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, who accused Bowers of shutting her and other leaders out of social media accounts in March.
Abdullah estimates that the BLM Global Network Foundation’s financial accounts hold in the region of $100 million. She accused the board of directors of “engaging in self dealing, enriching themselves off of the backs of people who put their blood, sweat and tears into this movement.”
The lawsuit accuses Bowers of leading the foundation “into multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorney generals, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The investigations referenced in the lawsuit are a direct result of Washington Examiner reporting earlier this year, which laid bare its shocking lack of financial transparency.
The BLM Global Network Foundation is “like a giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction,” CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron previously told the Washington Examiner in January.
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The lawsuit adds that the BLM Global Network Foundation has recently been locked out of funds held on its behalf by the Tides Foundation, which served as the charity’s fiscal sponsor during the second half of 2020. The BLM Global Network Foundation reported earlier this year that Tides remained in control of over $26 million of BLM’s funds as of the end of 2021.
Bowers demanded that Tides relinquish all the funds to the BLM Global Network Foundation in a May 4 email, the lawsuit says. But on June 29, Tides informed the BLM Global Network Foundation that it would pause future distributions from the fund due to the charity’s failure to file tax documents on time, as well as questions surrounding its purchase of a $6 million mansion in Los Angeles in October 2020 with donor funds.
Tides has not returned numerous inquiries from the Washington Examiner about the status of its partnership with the BLM Global Network Foundation.
Bowers and the BLM Global Network Foundation denied all claims of financial misconduct, telling the Los Angeles Times in a statement: “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.”
A statement posted to the homepage of blacklivesmatter.com added that the allegations are “slanderous and devoid of reality.”
Bowers is one of three board members of the BLM Global Network Foundation.
Bowers and Cullors were business partners before Bowers was hired to work at the BLM Global Network Foundation in 2020 in a fundraising capacity. He served as treasurer for numerous organizations run by Cullors, including Reform LA Jails and BLM PAC.
The BLM Global Network Foundation’s other two board members, Cicley Gay and D’Zhane Parker, also share close ties to Cullors, the Washington Examiner previously reported. Gay and Parker joined the BLM Global Network Foundation Board in April.
Gay’s company, the Amplifiers, received $53,000 from Reform LA Jails for consulting services in 2019, campaign filings show.
And Parker earned $20,500 as the lead organizer for Reform LA Jails in 2019, the filings reveal.
Cullors left the BLM Global Network Foundation without a leader after she resigned in May 2021 amid scrutiny of her personal real estate purchases, in particular a $6 million Los Angeles mansion.
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Earlier this year, she said she gets triggered whenever she hears the term “IRS Form 990,” the document charities are required to file to the public every year disclosing their financial activities.
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