Ben & Jerry’s board chairwoman, Anuradha Mittal, the leading voice behind the company’s decision to boycott Israel, has been accusing of alleged self-dealing, diverting tens of thousands of dollars from Ben & Jerry’s Foundation to fund her own pro-Palestinian non-profit, the New York Post reported. A legal watchdog filed a complaint to the IRS about the $104,000 that Mittal transferred from the Foundation to her Oakland Institute in 2017 and 2018, where she is the executive director and the only salaried employee. According to her IRS filings, Mittal “paid herself” a yearly salary of $156,00 during those years. Some of the cash from the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation went to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, a “human rights group.” Last year, the European Union withdrew almost $2 million of funding from Badil after the organization refused to sign an anti-terror clause in its funding contract guaranteeing that none of the funds would reach terrorist organizations, such as Hamas and Hezbollah. “It is our contention that this a possible violation of self-dealing as Mittal is considered a disqualified person under IRS rules,” stated a complaint by the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center, a non-profit that monitors the ethics of government officials and labor unions. According to a Washington Free Beacon report earlier this month, the amount of “self-dealing” funds was even higher, stating that “the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation steered over $170,000 in grants to an anti-Israel nonprofit group run by one of its board directors, a potential violation of self-dealing laws, according to an ethics watchdog organization.” The report continued: “Anuradha Mittal is a trustee at the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, which has awarded $170,500 in grants to the Oakland Institute, an advocacy group that Mittal founded and where she serves as the paid executive director.” Oakland Institute is a so-called “independent policy think tank” that has published articles in defense of Hezbollah and Hamas. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

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