Heal the World Foundation, the charity started by Michael Jackson and Shmuley Boteach, is in trouble.
Michael Jackson’s Heal the World Foundation once spread millions of dollars around the globe to help children threatened by war and disease. Fueling its success was the kind of money and excitement that only someone of Jackson’s star power could generate.
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But now, like its founder, the charity is in trouble.
Starved of funding and leadership, the organization has stopped donating to charitable causes and has been suspended in California since 2002 for failing to file yearly accounting statements, records show.
Here is some more information:
According to tax records, Heal the Kids raised about $500,000. It spent some money on two lectures and a book giveaway in which Jackson participated. But most of the cash — about $400,000 — went to salaries and expenses. Last November, the state of New York shut down the charity because it wasn’t filing paperwork with the state.
The ship is most certainly sinking. But rather than throw his former friend a life preserver, Shmuley Boteach, who also founded the charity, tries to push Jackson overboard.
Jackson stopped working with the organization at the urging of friends and handlers who believed its activities were too “pedestrian” for the King of Pop, said Shmuley Boteach, the group’s former president.
“He was being told this initiative was going to devalue him as a superstar. ‘Overexpose’ him was the word constantly used,” said Boteach, a rabbi, author and columnist who helped Jackson start Heal the Kids
I will resist the urge to make the obvious joke here.
I will not pretend to know what happened to this money, but bear in mind that Boteach has been investigated in the past for misappropriating the funds of a charity.
Britain’s charity commissioners have frozen the trust accounts of the Kosher Sex rabbi’s L’Chaim Society amid concern about “the application and control of the charity’s funds.”
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who achieved celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic with his provocatively titled books – which include Kosher Sex and The Jewish Guide to Adultery – is believed to have transformed the L’Chaim Society, a modest student group he founded at Oxford University, into an organization that generates an annual six-figure cash stream.
During the past 10 years, the unambiguously brash and glitzy style of the New York-educated rabbi has attracted a significant following among Britain’s young Jews, but it has also offended many in the Orthodox establishment.
They were particularly upset when he sold an excerpt from Kosher Sex to Playboy magazine for a reported fee of $200,000.
Noted one media commentator: “For an Orthodox rabbi, Shmuley Boteach has an unorthodox way of doing things”.
The charity commissioners launched their inquiry into the society three months ago after documents handed to the police were passed on to them.
The commissioners, who monitor the activities of Britain’s charitable trusts, said they had decided to freeze the society’s bank accounts as “a temporary and protective measure.”
Their investigation is understood to center on payments that were made by the society, including contributions to mortgage payments on Boteach’s $600,000 London home.
Officials of the L’Chaim Society insist that the payments were made only after consultations with charity experts at a leading London law firm.
It seems that Shmuley is going to be very busy in the coming months. Perhaps that is why this posting appears on his blog:
Intern for Shmuley
Rabbi Shmuleyís organization is happy to accommodate the right candidates seeking internships who want to work in radio, writing, communal outreach and events, religious and social programming, publishing, and PR. If youíre interested, please send a resume with your contact details.
And once again, I will resist making the obvious joke.
