The American Red Cross - A Legacy of Corruption

The Red Cross money extracting scam

October 21, 2013

Balkan Chronicle - The International Red Cross is an Elite-controlled front organization whose true purpose is the complete opposite from its stated purpose.

The moment a 'natural' disaster such as Hurricane Katrina, the Haitian earthquake or the Japanese Tsunami occurs; the Red Cross floods the airwaves with ads seeking donations. With music full of pathos playing in the background, the announcer tells us that the Red Cross is 'always there in time of need' and now that the poor victims are suffering terribly, 'won't you please open your heart and wallet?'

These people have totally mastered the science of extracting money from the unthinking masses. For example, the dust from the World Trade Center demolition had not even settled (literally) before the Red Cross were appealing to us all to give blood and money to help the families of the victims of the 'terrorist' attack. Thousands of people gave blood and even more gave millions of dollars to the Red Cross. Perhaps, it would have been pertinent to ask 'blood for whom'? Everyone was dead (there were few injuries, relatively speaking) so why was the Red Cross asking for blood donations day and night for a week or longer?

The answer is reflective of the true purpose of the Red Cross. Sad to say the Red Cross is a disaster 'racket,' which is in the business of making money from people's misery, especially with totally engineered disasters such as 9/11. They sell the blood on, of course, but they apparently also use the blood for other things to which the public is generally not privy and one could legitimately ask where does all the money go and to whom?

For the most part, they keep it for themselves as do the vast majority of major, household-name charities. The families of the victims of 9/11 had to badger, harass and threaten the Red Cross in an attempt to obtain $11 million that they would not release to the families, as long as one year after the event - and that is just what we were told in the media, so my guess is that the actual figure was much, much higher than this.

The CEO of the Red Cross and other senior administrators receive obscene salaries and massive perks, all of which are paid directly from contributions. At the time of writing, the salary of the current president is almost $700,000 per annum and the total revenue of the Red Cross is well in excess of $3bn!

KATRINA AND 9-11

In Sept. 2005, Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones wrote:

"As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina continues to wreak mayhem and havoc amid reports of mass looting, shooting at rescue helicopters, rapes and murders, establishment media organs are promoting the Red Cross as a worthy organization to give donations to. The biggest website in the world, Yahoo.com, displays a Red Cross donation link prominently on its front page. Every time there is a major catastrophe the Red Cross and similar organizations like United Way are given all the media attention while other charities are left in the shadows. This is not to say that the vast majority of Red Cross workers are not decent people who simply want to help those in need".

In fact, the Red Cross has been caught 'red-handed' withholding money in the wake of terrible disasters that require immediate funds. In the name of the 'Liberty Fund' for 9/11 family relief, the Red Cross collected $564 million in donations yet only actually distributed around $150 million.

The then Red Cross President Dr. Bernadine Healy arrogantly proclaimed:

"The Liberty Fund is a war fund. It has evolved into a war fund. We must have blood readiness. We must have the ability to help our troops if we go into a ground war. We must have the ability to help the victims of tomorrow." (She resigned under fire in Dec. 2001, and died in 2011. )

On Jan 3, 2005, CNN reported:

"Charities swung into action after the September 11 terrorist attacks, raising more than $1 billion. But questions are being raised about where and how and how much of that money is being distributed. Bearing the brunt Tuesday during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight panel was outgoing Red Cross President Dr. Bernadine Healy. Healy was hammered by one New York official for the Red Cross' decision to put aside nearly half of the money raised for future needs that may include terrorist attacks. 'I see the Red Cross, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars that was intended by the donating public to be used for the victims of September 11 -- I see those funds being sequestered into long-term plans for an organization,' New York Attorney general Eliot Spitzer testified."

LEGACY OF CORRUPTION

In fact the Red Cross has a long, long sordid history of stealing cash donations intended for disaster relief.

Following the disastrous San Francisco earthquake in 1989, the Red Cross donated only $10 million of the $50 million that had been raised, and kept the rest.Similarly, following the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 and the Red River flooding in 1997 many donations were also withheld. Even as far back as the Korean War, the Red Cross was plundering soldiers' relief packages, the famous 'Red Cross Parcels' from home.

The Red Cross is very adept at stealing money and looting mail and has been exposed in this respect many times but it has been allowed to escape sanctions, punishment or exposure because the organization is so closely allied with and indeed is inextricably linked with the Elite establishment. It is without doubt an organization run by Elite insiders whose purpose is to gather intelligence and steal from the poor, underprivileged and needy to further line the pockets of the rich.

Several minor charities that were involved with the 2004 Tsunami relief project expressed outrage in public to say that large charities like Red Cross and Oxfam were engaged in secret negotiations that resulted in a large amount of the public-donated money being withheld from those most affected by the disaster. See Red Cross Hasn't Spent $200 million Raised for S. Asian Tsunami

The message here should be clear to all. Under no circumstances donate money to major charitable organizations unless you would like your money to go to benefit the Elite's expansion of their empires and the fast-developing police state in your own backyards. Find smaller independent charitable organizations that you know to be reliable and make your donations to them.

IRS form 990 for the American Red Cross for calendar year 2011

According to their IRS form 990 for 2001, the America RedCross spent eight times more on salaries and compensation for employees than they did on their cause (programs and services for people affected by disaster).

Of the $3.2 billion the Red Cross received in contributions for 2011, 99% ($3.1 billion) was spent on salaries and other expenses, which left only l % ($38 million) of contributions for the cause: helping victims of disaster relief (they used reserve funds to supplement the $38 million remaining after salaries and other expenses to fund programs and services, for total grants of $212 million).

An organization’s cause should be where the majority of contributions go, not for salaries and other administrative costs (there are more than a million American Red Cross volunteers who work for nothing). In 2011, the American Red Cross spent nearly $2 billion compensating 30,000 employees and spent over $3 billion for other expenses, and only made disaster relief payments of $66 million (of the $212 million total paid out in grants).

If a charity spends most of its contributions on salaries and other expenses rather than its mission, it is inefficient and ineffective.

Total Revenue 2011: $3.2 billion

Revenue Paid Out in Grants for Its Cause: $212 million (1% of revenue plus 6% borrowed from reserves)

Revenue Spent on Salaries & Compensation: $1.7 billion (54.64% of revenue)

Revenue Spent on Other Expenses: $1.4 billion (44.17% of revenue)

Total Expenses: $3.3 billion ($175 million in the red)

Net Assets or Fund Balances at Year End: $1.6 billion

CEO’s salary: $591,122 plus $37,386 in “other compensation” per IRS Form 990 (Forbes reported her salary as $1,032,022)

1,359 employees receiving more than $100,000 in compensation

57 independent contractors receiving more than $100,000 in compensation

The Red Cross operated in the red in 2011 by $175 million (spending 6% more than revenue after paying administrative costs and salaries), which is why the figures above add up to more than a 100%. However, they are not broke – they ended the year with assets or fund balances of $1.6 billion. Plus, in 2011, they had a large endowment fund worth $828 million, securities worth $563 million, and land, buildings and equipment worth $1.1 billion.

On schedule I of their 990 form, the American Red Cross noted that they made disaster relief payments of $66 million in 2011 and “did not make specific financial assistance to any one individual during the fiscal year exceeding $5,000.”

On their IRS 990 filing for 2011, the Red Cross listed the “reported compensation” for their president and CEO, Gail J. McGovern, as $591,122 plus $37,386 in “other compensation.” However, Forbes reported in 2010 that her pay at the Red Cross was $1,032,022.

Top Person: Gail J. McGovern
Top Pay: $1,032,022
Fiscal Year ending on 06/30/10

Gail J. McGovern joined the American Red Cross as president and CEO on April 8, 2008. Prior to joining the Red Cross, McGovern was a faculty member at the Harvard Business School and served as president of Fidelity Personal Investments, a unit of Fidelity Investments, responsible for half a trillion dollars of assets under management. She was also executive vice president for the Consumer Markets Division at AT&T, the $26 billion residential long-distance organization and largest business unit. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Columbia University, and has since been recognized as alumna of the year from both universities. McGovern is currently a member of the board of trustees of Johns Hopkins University and the board of directors of DTE Energy. In February 2013, she joined the board of directors of The Weather Company, which operates The Weather Channel, weather.com and other services. McGovern was recognized by Fortune magazine in 2000 and 2001 as one of the top 50 most powerful women in corporate America.

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2011/14/charities-11_American-National-Red-Cross_CH0013.html

Seven years after the 2004 tsunami, billions in private contributions still had not been distributed by the Red Cross.

Major humanitarian crises in the past decade have prompted unprecedented amounts of private donations: the tsunami that caused widespread devastation across the Indian Ocean in December 2004 saw US$3.9 billion raised in private aid; the response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti generated at least US$1.2 billion in contributions from the general public; and US$450 million was channelled in response to the 2010 floods in Pakistan.
Based on a conservative estimate, at least US$18 billion was raised from private donors in response to humanitarian needs between 2006 and 2010.

http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Private-funding-an-emerging-trend.pdf

The report below is from 2011.

Should You Donate to the Red Cross?

http://www.theagitator.com/2011/03/13/should-you-donate-to-the-red-cross/

Sunday, March 13th, 2011

Should you heed the calls to donate to the Red Cross to help Japan? Maybe not. Here’s an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed from January of this year:

When a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti, the world community came to its aid. Millions of private citizens in this country and around the world reached into their household budgets and gave generously to the Haitian people who were grappling with the devastation…

Despite billions of dollars pledged from private citizens and world governments, a serious health scare has arisen. With poor sanitation, malnutrition, little safe drinking water and no sewage systems, the crowded temporary housing tent communities provide ideal breeding grounds for cholera.

One independent report has conservatively estimated that there is one toilet for every 273 people in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area. Throughout Haiti, a year after we opened our hearts and wallets, the latrines are not cleaned on a regular basis and human waste spreads into the streams by the frequent rains. Now, a year later, limited water distribution continues, with little development of sustainable, municipal water-filtration systems.

In the face of these conditions, Haiti remains the non-governmental organization (NGO) capital of the world. Before the earthquake, there were more than 5,000 organizations on the ground in Haiti. From the International Red Cross to any number of church and civic organizations, Haiti is replete with people of good will who are there to make it a better place to live. Each of these organizations conducted their own fundraising campaigns after the earthquake and collected millions of dollars.

With millions of dollars at our disposal do we really lack the ability to support basic sanitation and clean water? Do we lack the ability to stop a preventable, deadly water-borne disease right off our coast? What happened to the money?
Many of the charities on the ground have reported they are setting aside a portion of their donations (sometimes up to 70 percent) for the “reconstruction” period.

It’s clear from the outpouring of support many of those who donated from their own scarce family budgets believed they were giving to save lives immediately. In the face of a preventable public health emergency, like cholera, many will be surprised that more than half of their donations continue to sit in U.S. banks.
My organization has attempted for nearly a year to get the Red Cross to account for the money they collected for Haiti. In a recent meeting, I was told that 70 percent of their donations remain in “reserve” for longer-term reconstruction.

So here’s my question for any readers out there who know more about these things than I do (which isn’t much). Who deserves our donations? I’ve heard that Doctors Without Borders is on the ground early after disasters, has low overhead, and delivers immediate relief.

I’m also open to the possibility that the op-ed above is wrong, or that there are credible responses to or justifications of the points it raises. But I’d like to see those responses. It’s hard to fathom why the Red Cross would have 70 percent of Haiti donations still sitting in the bank a year later, while the country battles preventable disease outbreaks caused by poor sanitation.