| ||
| ||
| ||
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Charity to be investigated for faulty accounting
SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- PipeVine, an affiliate of United Way, will be investigated for misusing money intended for the needy, California's Attorney General's Office said Saturday. The company, which handled donations for United Way of the Bay Area and several large companies, abruptly closed its doors earlier this week when it ran out of money. The company acknowledged it had used some of the money intended for charities to cover its own internal expenses. Several Bay Area charities said they were still awaiting funds that had been pledged to them, but it was not yet clear how much money had been misappropriated. United Way said PipeVine was supposed to take no more than 7 percent of donations to cover the costs of processing donations, but started taking 8 or 9 percent. A spokesman for California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said no decision had been made on whether criminal charges would be brought related to the faulty accounting. No current officials from PipeVine could be reached for comment on the investigation by the Attorney General's Office. But a former PipeVine board member who left months before the irregularities surfaced, said he thought the discrepancy could have occurred when people failed to make good on pledged donations. David Canaan, who stepped down from the PipeVine board in January, told Reuters Saturday that charities often suffered shortfalls in tough economic times, when people lost their jobs and did not fulfill their pledges. He suggested PipeVine may have been operating its internal budget based on the amount of money that had been pledged, rather than what had actually come in. "My understanding is that people will often make pledges for a whole year," he said. "I guess the question is do you count the pledge, or do you count the cash that comes in." One of PipeVine's most high-profile jobs had involved processing donations for September 11 charities that had been contributed through the Internet. PipeVine distributed some $20 million of donations to that cause.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
