It never fails. There is always some serious drama in the news. The latest comes courtesy of another athlete — Jackie Joyner Kersee and her husband, Robert. According to Belleville News, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation, which is financially strapped, managed to pay her husband’s private foundation at least $475,000 in consulting fees and his foundation failed to file federal income statements as required by law. Why is it that rich folks (or seemingly rich folks) won’t pay their taxes? The Internal Revenue Service will land on you like a ton of bricks if you repeatedly fail to file your tax returns. Get comfy because this is better than a soap opera.
According to public tax documents, the board of directors of her foundation voted to pay Robert Kersee’s Diversity Through Sports Youth Foundation $327,000 in 2003; $35,000 in 2004; $20,000 in 2005 and $75,000 in 2006. here’s what is crazy, during those same years, Mrs. Kersee’s foundation was bleeding millions and the East St. Louis youth center it runs is struggling to pay its bills to this very day. Why won’t these people do the right thing to avoid a media spotlight on their lives? This is rather embarrassing. Of course, Robert Kersee won’t say what the money was for. They double-dipped. That’s the bottom line.
This certainly does not pass the smell test. Something is very wrong here. Everyone knows that filing a 990 is integral in giving the public confidence that their donations are being used properly. No more money should be donated to either of these foundations. He just proved that he is a complete moron for not having an accountant to handle these matters. Here is another interesting item. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is president of the Jackie-Joyner Kersee Foundation board and her husband is vice president, according to public documents. Neither receives a salary. The foundation operates on private donations, government grants, membership fees and the sale of concessions. Where did the $425,000 go? From 2004 to 2006, the foundation amassed a debt of $2.5 million. Last year, the center moved to cut staff and services and restructure its debt, according to public documents. But yet it is still paying its executive director $88,000.
Four years earlier, the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation and the Diversity Through Sports Youth Foundation received large donations from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the charitable arm of the Battle Creek, Mich., cereal giant.
In 2004, Kellogg awarded $892,736 to Diversity Through Sports Youth Foundation to “strengthen and promote philanthropy among athletes as a strategy for community engagement and leadership development among young people,” according to the grant description found online.
That same year, Kellogg made a grant of $1.5 million to the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation to “establish a model for sports philanthropy that unleashes new resources of community partnership and collaboration that engages youth as valuable resources to improve the quality of life in the community.”
Kellogg spokeswoman Dianne Price said the grants were used properly, and both foundations were eligible, tax-exempt charities.
“The work that (they) have been engaged in, in the East St. Louis area, is in direct alignment with our interests in providing hope, opportunities and resources that propel young people to success,” Price said. Source: BND News
This is really crazy, but the truth will come to light and it may not be pretty. Kellogg’s ought to ask for their money back. Want more?
Besides the $457,000 in consulting fees passed between the two foundations, financial statements for the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation show:
• Robert Kersee received a salary of $47,154 as president of his wife’s foundation in 2001. A report stated that Kersee worked an average of two hours per week as president.
• The center had total revenue in 2006 of $1.61 million and expenses of $2.55 million, resulting in an operating deficit of $936,328, according to the foundations Form 990 filed in 2007, the latest report available.
• A payment of $33,000 in 2007 in consulting fees to a private, for-profit business owned by Robert Kersee, even though the corporate status of the business, Track, Court and Field Inc., was revoked in 2004, according to the Missouri secretary of state.
• The foundation paid $149,000 from 2005-07 to a business owned by the sister of Nino Fennoy, treasurer of the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation and Joyner-Kersee’s high school track coach. The money paid to the Fennoy Group of Fairview Heights was for human resources consulting.
• As of Dec. 31, 2007, the foundation owed $197,174 to Heptathlon Inc., listed on the foundation’s annual report as a company owned by a relative of a foundation board member who was not identified, and an additional $48,000 to Track, Court and Field, even though the latter company no longer was registered as a business in Missouri. Missouri incorporation records for Heptathlon Inc. do not list the owners’ names.
They have money troubles of their own too. The IRS has a $425,496 lien against their home for unpaid taxes in 1996, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. Someone is going to end up in jail. Robert Kersee is reportedly wanted by the Cole County Sheriff’s Department in Jefferson City, Mo., for allegedly passing a bad check for $578 to pay his state income tax and for failing to show up at an April 2007 court hearing. Of course he is screaming that he being attacked personally. Really Mr. Kersee? Seems to me you are skating on really thin ice and you are about to take your wife down with you.
Filed under: Charitable Foundations, Federal Tax Lien, IRS 990 Form, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Misdemeanor, Passing Bad Check, Robert Kersee
Black Political Thought 