Ben & Jerry's board chair Anuradha Mittal, generally credited as the person who led the movement to persuade the company to stop selling its ice cream over the Green Line in Israel, is under suspicion of fraud, according to a new report in the New York Post.
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According to the Post, Mittal allegedly transferred some $100,000 to a nonprofit organization in which she is the only paid employee.
The report presented a complaint filed with the IRS by the Virginia-based National Legal and Policy Center, which claimed that from 2017-2018, Mittal, who served as head of Ben & Jerry's nonprofit foundation, transferred over $100,000 to the Oakland Institute, defined as a progressive think tank, although Mittal was reportedly the only member who drew a salary.
The complaint to the IRS read "It is our contention that this is a possible violation of self-dealing as Mittal is considered a disqualified person under IRS rules."
The Post report said that the Oakland Institute had received $104,000 in grants from the Ben & Jerry's Foundation, which paid Mittal $156,000 in 2017-2018. Some of that money reportedly went to the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, from which the EU pulled some $2 million in funding in 2020 because it refused to sign an anti-terrorism clause in its funding contract.
The clause in question stipulates that no EU money donated to Badil would be transferred to members of terrorist organizations.
As of Friday, Mittal has not responded to the complaint, saying only that false allegations had been made about the Oakland Institute and the Ben & Jerry's Foundation.
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