So far, every for-profit enterprise started by Al Sharpton and known to National Review Online
has been shut down in at least one jurisdiction for failure to pay
taxes, a review of public records in New York and Delaware reveals.
Records
show that Sharpton’s beleaguered for-profit entities often overlap and
intertwine, some sharing ties with the reverend’s nonprofit
organization, National Action Network. Their financial records are
copious, confusing, and sometimes outright bizarre, and together, they
depict persistent financial woes for Sharpton, who also personally owes
New York State nearly $596,000, according to active tax warrants.
“He clearly appears — based on the information that’s available to us —
to have a history of noncompliance with tax obligations,” says
Bernadette Schopfer, the director of taxation at New York’s Maier Markey
& Justic, a certified public-accounting firm that has had no
dealings with Sharpton or National Action Network. “It appears that
[Sharpton] does not file [taxes for his businesses], and then opens up
something else. At all the entities we see he has opened up, he has not
been compliant with the obligations of the owner of a
business. . . . He’s either willful in his behavior, or he’s just
sloppy.”
Sharpton, who was traveling internationally, was unavailable for an interview, despite NRO’s numerous queries over several days.
Sharpton’s first for-profit company, Raw Talent, probably has the
strangest set of tax-debt records. The company was incorporated as a
for-profit entity in 1991, the same year Sharpton founded National
Action Network.
Raw Talent racked up a lot of tax debt. According
to a 2007 lien that appears to remain active, the company owed a total
of $580,453 in federal taxes, and state records say it also owes $4,834
in New York taxes.
For some reason, the federal lien says the taxes owed are for the tax
period ending in 1950 — long before Raw Talent was incorporated.
(Perhaps this is a clerical error, Schopfer says.) The kind of tax debt
listed is also strange: It’s listed under the code 4720, which signifies
an excise tax on charities, even though Raw Talent was registered as a
for-profit entity, not a philanthropic nonprofit. A spokesperson for the
Internal Revenue Service could not explain this to NRO, saying privacy
laws prohibit the agency from commenting on the tax situations of
specific individuals or entities.
New York dissolved Raw Talent in
2002 for failure to pay taxes, but not before Sharpton opened up a new
company, Revals Communications, in 1999.
More, Much More at: National Review
The Reverend Al Sharpton
TAX EVASION: In a 1988 interview,
Sharpton said he saw no reason why blacks should pay taxes. “If we do
not have a justice system that protects us, what are we paying for?”
Sharpton has faced multiple charges—and one conviction—of tax evasion.
TAWANA
BRAWLY: 1987. Al Sharpton, during the infamous Tawana Brawley case,
falsely accused a former assistant district attorney of raping and
sodomizing Ms. Brawley. Young Tawana stated that white racists abducted,
raped, and sodomized her, scrawling the initials “KKK” on her in human
feces. A grand jury later found the entire incident a complete hoax.
Most likely, Ms. Brawley, afraid of punishment for staying out too late,
fabricated the entire story. This did not stop Reverend Al Sharpton,
who accused Pagones an assistant district attorney, of the crime. “We
stated openly that Steven Pagones did it. If we’re lying, sue us, so we
can go into court with you and prove you did it. Sue us—sue us right
now.”
Pagones did. After receiving death threats, and threats
against his child, Pagones sued Sharpton and two others for defamation. A
jury unanimously concluded that Sharpton defamed Pagones, ordering
Sharpton to pay $65,000 to Pagones. The Reverend promptly announced his
intention not to pay. A couple years later, Sharpton’s buddies passed
the hat and paid off Sharpton’s debt, which totaled $87,000 with
interest and penalties. To this day, never having paid one penny of his
own to Pagones, Sharpton refuses to apologize, “I did what I
believed….They are asking me to grovel. They want black children to say
they forced a black man coming out of the hard-core ghetto to his
knees….Once you begin bending, it’s ‘did you bend today?’ or ‘I missed
the apology, say it again.’ Once you start compromising, you lose
respect for yourself.”
CENTRAL PARK JOGGER: In 1989 “the jogger,”
a young white woman, was monstrously raped and nearly beaten to death
in Central Park. Sharpton insisted—despite the defendants’
confessions—that her black attackers were innocent, modern-day
Scottsboro Boys trapped in “a fit of racial hysteria.” Sharpton charged
that the jogger’s boyfriend did it, and organized protests outside the
courthouse, chanting, “The boyfriend did it!” and denouncing the victim
as “Whore!” He brought Tawana Brawley to the trial, to show her “white
justice” and arranged for her to meet the attackers. Sharpton appealed
for a psychiatrist to examine the victim, generously saying, “It doesn’t
even have to be a black psychiatrist….We’re not endorsing the damage to
the girl—if there was this damage.” (While it doesn’t excuse his
calling the victim a “whore” and denigrating any damage to her, or his
accusations against the boyfriend, the convictions of the accused were
eventually vacated, despite their taped confessions, after another
man—whose DNA matched—confessed to the rape in 2002.)
CROWN
HEIGHTS/ “DIAMOND MERCHANTS”: In 1991, Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old
black child was killed in a traffic accident in Crown Heights (in
Brooklyn), when a car driven by a Hasidic Jew went out of control.
Sharpton turned it into a racial incident. Sharpton led 400 protesters
through the Jewish section of Crown Heights, with one protester holding a
sign that read, “The White Man Is the Devil.” There were four nights of
rock- and bottle-throwing, and a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded
by a mob shouting, “Kill the Jew” and stabbed to death. A hundred others
were injured. Sharpton said, “The world will tell us that [Gavin Cato]
was killed by accident….What type of city do we have that would allow
politics to rise above the blood of innocent babies?…Talk about how
Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and
deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights….All we
want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones,
you got to pay for it. No compromise. Pay for your deeds.” Later
Sharpton said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their
yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
ARAFAT: When Sharpton
announced a 2001 trip to the Middle East, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach helped
plan his itinerary. Sharpton, according to the Rabbi, promised not to
meet with Yassir Arafat, yet only days later, Jewish New Yorkers opened
the morning paper to see a smiling Arafat and Sharpton, meeting and
shaking hands in Israel. Furious, Rabbi Boteach said, “Prior to our
recent trip to Israel, U.S. black leader Reverend Al Sharpton and I
discussed several times that there were to be no meetings with Arab or
Palestinian leaders, not because I wished to set preconditions for our
travel, but because the express objective of our mission was to show
solidarity with Israeli victims of terror. The idea was to provide a
magnanimous gesture of friendship and solidarity with the Jewish nation
that would hopefully have strong reverberations for the relationship of
the Jewish and black communities back home.”
FREDDY’S FASHION
MART/”WHITE INTERLOPER”: 1995. A Jewish store owner in Harlem was
accused of driving a black record store owner out of business, when the
United House of Prayer, one of the largest black landlords on 125th
Street, raised the rent on the Fashion Mart owned by a Jew, Freddy
Harari, who then raised the rent on his subtenant, Sikhulu Shange, who
ran a record store. At one of many rallies meant to scare the Jewish
owner away, Sharpton said, “…There is a systematic and methodical
strategy to eliminate our people from doing business off 125th Street. I
want to make it clear…that we will not stand by and allow them to move
this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business.”
Following a demonstration three months later, one of the protestors, a
black man, stormed Freddy’s Fashion Mart with a pistol, screaming, “It’s
on now! All blacks out!” In addition to shooting, he set fire to the
building, eventually killing himself and seven others. Initially,
Sharpton denied having spoken at any rallies. When tapes surfaced, he
said, “What’s wrong with denouncing white interlopers?” Eventually, he
apologized—but only for saying “white,” not “interloper.”
CRIMINAL
JUSTICE: During the “Million Man March” in Washington, civil rights
“activist” Al Sharpton thundered, “O.J. is home, but Mumia Abu Jamal
ain’t home. And we won’t stop till all of our people that need a chance
in an awkward and unbalanced criminal justice system can come home.”
OUT
OF THE KING MOVEMENT: Although he was 14 when Martin Luther King was
assassinated, Sharpton claims he “came out of the King movement.”
Sharpton once explained, “I was on some show this week, and people said,
‘Why don’t you just let it go? Why don’t y’all just get over it?’ Get
over what? Get over Dr. King dying? Get over Medger Evers dying? Get
over Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner dying? Get over those four girls in
Birmingham dying? We are never gonna get over it, and we are never gonna
let you forget it!”
FBI TAPES/COCAINE: In 2002, HBO aired a
19-year-old FBI surveillance of Sharpton with self-described mobster
Michael Franzese and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American
businessman. The three were discussing promoting boxing matches and
musical events. HBO’s “Real Sports” got a hold of a hidden camera video
that shows undercover agent Victor Quintana posing as a drug dealer
trying to convince Sharpton to play a middleman in a big cocaine buy.
Read More about Cocaine Dealer Al: Free Republic
