The Southern Poverty Law Center, which claims to “dismantle white supremacy,” saw its offshore assets balloon by as much as 430 percent over the last decade. The left-wing group allegedly defrauded donors by funneling millions of dollars to the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations.
A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted the SPLC, a self-described “catalyst for racial justice,” for wire fraud, false statements to banks, and conspiracy to commit money laundering for allegedly funneling more than $3 million from 2014 to 2023 to members of the KKK, Aryan Nations, National Alliance, and other “violent extremist” groups. The SPLC routed the payments, which included a $1 million payment to a leader of the National Alliance, through a series of shell companies authorized by SPLC’s chief financial officer and director of SPLC’s “Intelligence Project,” according to the Department of Justice’s indictment.
The SPLC was able to afford such payments thanks in part to its offshore assets, which skyrocketed over that decade, growing from $44 million in non-U.S. equity holdings in its fiscal year ending October 2013 to a staggering $233 million in its fiscal year ending October 2021, a 430 percent increase. Since then, the SPLC’s non-U.S. equity holdings have dropped to $130 million, according to its most recent financial audit covering the year ending October 2024. That’s still a nearly 200 percent increase from the group’s 2013 holdings.
While the practice of putting money in offshore accounts is not uncommon among major nonprofits, the SPLC has been criticized for years for bloated spending and financial opacity. The soaring amount of money in offshore accounts contributes to that, as does the indictment’s allegation regarding the use of shady bank accounts to pay hate group “informants.”
The SPLC’s massive endowment—the group controlled more than $800 million in assets at the end of 2024—relies heavily on foreign investments. The group’s non-U.S. equity holdings exceeded its domestic holdings every year since 2016, according to the figures reported in its annual financial audits. Those holdings appear to be concentrated in the Caribbean. The SPLC reported owning accounts in the Cayman Islands and disclosed making a combined $57 million in “investments” in Central America and the Caribbean in its two most recent Form 990 tax filings.
Though the SPLC was founded in 1971 as a civil rights law firm seeking damages for KKK victims, its scope expanded over the years to include issues like immigration enforcement and gender ideology. Every year since 1990, the SPLC has published a “hate map” that is meant to identify groups that “attack or malign an entire class of people,” but often includes run-of-the-mill conservative organizations like parental rights groups Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.
As the SPLC’s left-wing advocacy grew, so did its financial holdings, prompting criticism from former employees like Bob Moser, who described the group in 2019 as a “highly profitable scam” that was “ripping off donors.”
“Its balance sheet long ago revealed the SPLC had ceased to be a charity and become a venture capital firm,” Scott Walter, the president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, told the Washington Free Beacon. “The indictment reinforces that fact by revealing the SPLC operates like a centimillionaire who simultaneously invests in a drug to treat diabetes and a firm producing high fructose corn syrup.”
According to the indictment, the SPLC funneled $270,000 to an organizer of the “Unite the Right” rally held in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017. The organizer “made racist postings under the supervision of the SPLC,” the indictment says.
According to the Capital Research Center, the SPLC used the auspices of that rally, in which a neo-Nazi murdered counterprotester Heather Heyer, to solicit “a number of prominent pledges” from liberal celebrities and corporations, including $1 million donations from actor George Clooney and Apple.
The SPLC paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to other white supremacist leaders even as the group simultaneously featured them on its “Extremist Files” website. SPLC paid $140,000 to the former chairman of the National Alliance and $70,000 to a former director of the Aryan Nations when both were featured on the SPLC’s “Extremist Files” website.
The SPLC paid $1 million to a former employee of the National Alliance for 25 boxes of stolen documents from the neo-Nazi group’s headquarters. SPLC’s “Hatewatch” website later posted a report that utilized the records. SPLC allegedly paid $6,000 to another National Alliance employee to falsely take the blame for the theft, according to the indictment.
Other SPLC funds flowed to leaders of the KKK and American Front, which the SPLC has called a “California-based group of racist skinheads known for its predilection for violence.”
The SPLC paid $19,000 to the national director of American Front, who had been convicted of burning a cross. The SPLC also funneled $160,000 to various extremist group leaders, including a “former Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,” according to the indictment.
The bombshell indictment caps off a tumultuous stretch for the SPLC.
Conservatives blamed the SPLC for provoking a 2012 shooting at the headquarters of Family Research Council, a socially conservative group that SPLC classified as a “hate group.” Floyd Lee Corkins opened fire at the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C., office, and later said he targeted the organization after finding it on the SPLC’s “hate group” list.
SPLC fired Morris Dees, the group’s founder, in 2019 for workplace misconduct. According to reports, Dees was known for often “hitting on young women,” and black employees internally accused Dees of racism.
In 2024, former SPLC attorney Jody Owens was indicted on federal charges for allegedly using his position as district attorney of Jackson, Miss., to solicit $115,000 in bribes from a real estate developer.
The SPLC did not respond to a request for comment.
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