A prominent lawmaker is asking one of the largest relief and development charities in the world to release information about its operations in the Middle East. Last Friday, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to the president of an American non-profit asking questions about how the nonprofit’s former employee funneled up to $50 million to Hamas.
In 2020, Senator Grassley began investigating World Vision (WV) for transferring U.S. taxpayer dollars to a U.S. designated terror organization, Islamic Relief Agency. Since then, Israel tried and convicted a World Vision employee, Muhammad Halabi, of funneling up to $50 million to Hamas.
In response, World Vision said it would suspend its Gaza operations and have an audit performed. World Vision then claimed the audit “found no evidence of diversion of funds and no material evidence that El Halabi was part of or working for Hamas,” but the audit was never made public.
Senator Grassley is requesting an “unredacted copy of the audit.” His letter also asks how much U.S. taxpayer money was stolen by Halabi, what is WV doing to prevent future terror funding, is their Gaza operation still operating, and who are World Vision’s partners around the world.
Senator Grassley sent a similar letter to the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Samantha Powers, asking what USAID is doing to prevent U.S. taxpayer dollars from going to terrorists in light of its continued funding of World Vision. (World Vision received $491 million from USAID in 2022 and is the “sixth largest implementor of USAID grants.”)
World Vision and USAID have been given until August 25, to provide answers.