SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A San Francisco charitable foundation well-known for its philanthropy in the Bay Area and Israel is at the center of a brewing legal battle over its governance and grant-making.
The widow of Koret Foundation founder Joseph Koret filed a lawsuit on Tuesday alleging that the $500 million charity’s board president and five of its directors had misused the foundation’s assets and thwarted her efforts to make sure donations aligned with her late husband’s social welfare priorities.
Susan Koret says the more than $6 million the foundation had given to the Hoover Institution and conservative causes between 2010 and 2012 must have Joseph Koret “turning over in his grave.”
The defendants have brought a counter-suit accusing Susan Koret of incompetence and seeking to have her removed as the foundation’s chair, a position her husband appointed her to for life.
