When it comes to using her official position to protect her friends and destroy her political enemies, Miami State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle’s selective prosecution is as transparent as glass.  As I wrote over two years ago in Absolute Power, “Keeping her friends in power empowers her.  Keeping her friends close and prosecuting their enemies will ensure her continued reign as the most powerful politician in Miami-Dade County.”

But when it comes to accurately reporting her finances, as required by law, that’s where the transparency ends.

On November 30, 2015, the Crespogram Report posted a story about a secret slush fund that Katherine Fernandez-Rundle maintains at the Miami Foundation, over which she has complete control.

I mentioned the Miami Foundation when I was covering the story about North Miami’s Museum of Contemporary Art last year in Fishy Business at the MOCA.  At the time, the now former board of trustees were suing the City of North Miami over rights to several art collections.  The Miami Herald had reported, “Last month the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation withdrew a $5 million endowment grant made to MOCA in 2007 due to the dispute. The money was moved to a fund at the Miami Foundation.”  I found it quite curious indeed that one of the Miami Foundation’s beneficiaries was the Pérez Art Museum (PAMM), which was MOCA’s biggest competitor in the local art scene.

What I had not researched at the time was how the Miami Foundation operates and what it does with all the donations it receives.  After Al Crespo posted his blog about Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, I called him to pick his brains.  I asked him for more details about this “secret slush fund” and exactly how the State Attorney was able to hide her residual campaign donations in such a fund.

The Miami Foundation itself is a “non-profit” organization, classified by the Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3), which files annual Form 990 tax returns.  According to its website, the Miami Foundation explains:

What We Do

We are Miami’s Foundation

We work with all kinds of donors and help them make their philanthropy more effective and more fun. Over the years, donors have trusted us with more than $220 Million which has allowed us to invest over $10 Million in our community each year.

Why people choose to work with us:

We believe that everyone can be a philanthropist. When you partner with us, we’ll help you become one – and be very effective at it.

Second, we’re experts in two things – philanthropy and community. People like to work with us because of that. We provide excellent personal service and have a team of people who have a deep understanding of the community.

How we do it:

We talk with each donor and help them determine what causes are important to them.

With that information, a custom, charitable Fund – usually in their name is created. The donors choose how much and what kind of assets to start the Fund and our staff is their staff – just like if they had a private foundation.

Learn how to start your own Fund.

The organizations listed on its page Nonprofit Central page are organizations which received funding through the Miami Foundation from benefactors who designate where they want their donations to go.  All of these organizations are themselves 501(c)(3) companies and are required to file their own tax returns.  It’s all perfectly legitimate.

However, what about those “custom, charitable Fund(s)” set up in the names of individual donors, creating in essence “a private foundation?”

That “private foundation,” also referred to as a “donor assisted fund,” is the “secret slush fund” that Katherine Fernandez-Rundle set up, according to the Crespogram Report.  Al Crespo wrote:

What the Miami Foundation offers through the creation of these “donor assisted funds” is not only to allow individuals to legally hide money from both public scrutiny and from IRS reporting requirements, but also to receive money from individuals for these Funds that they might not want anyone to know about, because these “donor assisted funds” don’t require either the creation of a 501(c)(3), nor do they have to file an individual IRS Form 990 at the end of every year.

In an earlier blog, Al Crespo wrote that “Florida Statute 106.141 states that one of the ways that candidates can dispose of unused funds is to donate them to a 501(c)(3) tax exempt charitable organization.”  He followed up in his November 30, 2015 blog with “Unfortunately the members of the Florida Legislature didn’t anticipate when they wrote the law that an organization like the Miami Foundation would come along and provide a legal loophole for candidates to continue to be able to control their campaign funds after donating them to a 501(c)(3).”

On February 2, 2013, Katherine Fernandez-Rundle “donated” her excess campaign funds in the amount of $24,892.98 to the Miami Foundation, as acknowledged in an email to Crespo on June 6, 2014 from Javier Alberto Soto, the Executive Director of the Miami Foundation.  Mr. Soto wrote, “The donation you are referencing was made to a philanthropic fund established at the Miami Foundation by Katherine Fernandez-Rundle.”

Although Mr. Crespo specifically asked the Executive Director how these funds were spent, Soto ignored the question completely.

In another email dated June 21, 2014 from Bob Levy, responding on behalf of Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, who wrote, “The residual funds from State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle’s campaign account were given to the Miami Foundation, for philanthropic purposes, and to my knowledge no money has been distributed from the fund as of yet.”

Here’s where it gets really interesting.

As Al Crespo wrote, “Contrary to her claim, all of the money that she has received was NOT GIVEN to the Miami Foundation, it WAS GIVEN to the Katherine Fernandez-Rundle Fund.  That’s not a minor deception!  That’s a flagrant attempt to engage in an effort of misdirection for the purposes of deception to evade public scrutiny!”

He’s absolutely correct!

You will not find a list of the individual “donor assisted funds” anywhere on the Miami Foundation’s website.  Even if you thoroughly search its Financial Documents page, including copies of its annual tax returns, you will not find where any specific donations came from or how those individual donations were spent.  The Internal Revenue Service reporting requirements for non-profits is such that only the total amount of donations received is reported, but not the names of specific donors.

Furthermore, once these individual “private foundations” are formed at the Miami Foundation, anyone at all can donate to these “private donations” without the Miami Foundation having to report the individual donors’ names.

Even crazier, since Katherine Fernandez-Rundle Fund opened her “private foundation” with the residual funds from her 2012 campaign, she has maintained complete control over how those funds are to be spent.

What this means in plain English, is that Kathy now has the ability to ask individuals or businesses (campaign donors, perhaps?) to give money directly to her Miami Foundation “private foundation” and then she can spend those “donations” as she sees fit, in any way she pleases.

Completely off the books…

Without reporting anything on Campaign Treasurer’s Reports…

Away from the prying eyes of the Florida Division of Elections.

The Miami Foundation’s boast that donors will have their very own “private foundation” is a dream come true for politicians who wish to amass a campaign war chest completely under the radar.

There is a bit of good (and transparent) news, though.

As the Crespogram Report dished in today’s blog, More About the State Attorney’s Secret Slush Fund, as a public service the Florida Department of Agriculture maintains a “Gift Givers Guide,” which “is a resource that provides the financial information reported to us from charitable organizations.”  If you click on that link and type “Miami Foundation” in the box labeled “Business Name,” the Search Results displays five organizations per page.  If you click on page “7,” the fourth organization on the page is The Miami Foundation, Inc.  Underneath its name, you will find a long list of “Also Soliciting as:” individual funds in alphabetical order.

Right there amid the organizations beginning with the letter “K” is:

Mr. Crespo went on to note:

It has now been approximately 33 months since the money was transferred from Fernandez-Rundle’s campaign account to the Miami Foundation and TO THIS DAY there has been no acknowledgement or evidence that a single penny of that money has been given for any charitable purpose.

If Katherine Fernandez-Rundle didn’t have anything to hide, a complete accounting of the money collected and disbursed by her Katherine Fernandez-Rundle Fund  would have occurred a long time ago!

Since 2009, Al Crespo has been dogging City of Miami politicians, members of the Miami-Dade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, State Attorney Katherine Fernandez-Rundle, among others, and uncovering their various unethical (and in some cases, criminal) activities.  In 2012, Crespo was named the #1 blogger by the Miami New Times, claiming that he “has done the best job of informing citizens and law enforcement officials when our leaders are stealing from the public piggy bank.”

He’s certainly got his work cut out for him!

On January 30, 2012, Crespo dubbed Ms. Kathy the “Queen of Swag” because, as he wrote:

Fernandez-Rundle has, over the last 3 years, managed to rack up a little over $27,000.00 in free gifts, from tickets to events, limo service, hotel rooms, meals, jewelry and even $125 in roses from Tom Scotto, OJ Simpson’s BFF in Miami.

No one, and I want to repeat that, no other elected or appointed politician in Miami-Dade County, nor do I suspect in the entire state of Florida, has come anywhere near that total of swag collected while being a public official.

And that’s just the “swag” she’s required by Florida law to report on her Quarterly Gift Disclosure (Form 9).

One can only imagine how much “swag” she’s collected since she set up her own “private foundation” almost three years ago, where reporting requirements are non-existent.

One also has to wonder what it will take for the Internal Revenue Service to investigate “slush funds” like these and bust them wide open.

And, finally, one really  has to wonder why, out of the 17,709 lawyers practicing in Miami-Dade County, not even one of them has the cojones to run against the most corrupt State Attorney in the state of Florida!

NOT EVEN ONE!

In the meantime, I’ll end this rant by repeating Al Crespo’s latest gripe – and his famous tagline:

Stephanie Kienzle
“Spreading the Wealth”