BLM leader is accused of pilfering $10M from the organization by local chapters who say he used it like 'personal piggy bank' in explosive lawsuit
- BLMGNF board member Shalomyah Bowers was named in the new lawsuit
- Suit calls him a 'rogue administrator' who stole more than $10M in donations
- The suit was filed by other BLM organizers who say they deserved the funds
- BLMGFN furiously denied the allegations as 'harmful, divisive, and false'
A prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement has been accused of stealing more than $10 million from the group in an explosive lawsuit filed by other organizers in the movement.
Shalomyah Bowers, a board member of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (BLMGNF), was accused of using the group as a 'personal piggy bank' in the suit filed in Thursday in Los Angeles.
The lawsuit filed by Black Lives Matter Grassroots (BLMGR) offers few specifics about the alleged theft of funds, but illuminates the growing fractures in the movement that took in more than $90 million in donations in 2020.
In a lengthy statement, the BLMGFN board furiously denounced the allegations as 'harmful, divisive, and false' and accused BLMGR leaders of lining their own pockets with '$10,000 monthly stipends' rather than supporting local groups and families.
A new suit accuses BLMGF board member Shalomyah Bowers of stealing $10 million in donations, allegations that the board furiously denies
At a press conference on Thursday, BLMGR leader Melina Abdullah slammed BLMGNF, saying the group had lost touch with the foundations of the movement
BLMGFN is the national fundraising arm of the movement, distributing money to local groups through BLMGR, which operates as an umbrella group for many chapters.
Each side in the dispute is accusing the other of damaging the BLM movement and acting as a tool of white supremacy.
BLMGNF has been under financial scrutiny some time, and disclosures in May revealed that the group had splashed out $6 million for a Los Angeles mansion and $6.3 million on another 10,000-square-foot property in Toronto.
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Concerns over fiscal issues also led to the resignation of co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who denied any wrongdoing.
Cullors did admit that the group was ill-prepared to handle the tsunami of donations that poured in as it shot to international prominence following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Bowers, the board member named in the new lawsuit, was brought on by Cullors in 2020 to help raise money and oversee its distribution, and as one of the three board members has had a key oversight role since her resignation last year
The lawsuit calls Bowers a 'rogue administrator, a middle man turned usurper' whose own consulting firm was paid $2 million by BLMGNF in 2020.
'While BLM leaders and movement workers were on the street risking their lives, Mr. Bowers remained in his cushy offices devising a scheme of fraud and misrepresentation to break the implied-in-fact contract between donors and BLM,' the lawsuit states.
BLMGFN board members D'Zhane Parker, left, Cicley Gay, center, and Shalomyah Bowers are seen in May
Demonstrators hold 'Black Lives Matter' signs in front of the US District Court in St Paul, Minnesota, on February 24, 2022
At a press conference on Thursday, BLMGR leader Melina Abdullah slammed BLMGNF, saying the group had lost touch with the foundations of the movement.
'Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has been taken away from the people who built it,' she said. 'Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is now led by a highly paid consultant who paid himself upward of $2 million in a single year.'
BLMGNF fired back saying that Abdullah and BLMGR were 'falling victim to the carceral logic and social violence that fuels the legal system.'
The statement added that '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.'
In May, BLMGFN filed its first public financial disclosure, a 63-page Form 990 reporting that it took in $90 million in donations in 2020.
Cullors (pictured April 2022) stepped down as executive director of the organization amid controversy over her $3 million property portfolio
It ended its last fiscal year - from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021 - with nearly $42 million in net assets. The foundation had an operating budget of about $4 million, a board member told the AP at the time.
The tax filing shows that nearly $6 million was spent on a Los Angeles-area compound.
The Studio City property, which includes a home with six bedrooms and bathrooms, a swimming pool, a soundstage and office space, was intended as a campus for a black artists fellowship and is currently used for that purpose, the board member said.
It was the BLM foundation´s first public accounting of its finances since incorporating in 2017.
As a fledgling nonprofit, it had been under the fiscal sponsorship of a well-established charity, and wasn't required to publicly disclose its financials until it became an independent, 501(c)(3) nonprofit in December 2020.
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