Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
A former executive director the Asian Community and Cultural Center in Lincoln, Neb., one of the ORR’s mutual assistance associations, used the agency’s funding to pay for auto repairs, eye doctor bills, a vacation, and improvements to a restaurant she co-owned with her husband. At least $16,000 is unaccounted for. The agency received $125,000 this year alone from the ORR for ethnic community self-help. An article in the Lincoln Journal Star gives additional details:
The former executive director of Lincoln’s Asian Community and Cultural Center may have engaged in financial improprieties that total $16,000, state Auditor Mike Foley said Monday.
Foley posted an audit report on his website alleging Modesta Putla used her position to manipulate the accounting process over a three-year period to give herself thousands of dollars in unauthorized raises and vacation pay, improper expense reimbursements and questionable payments to The Peacock Indian Cuisine restaurant owned by Putla and her husband, Samuel Rajkumar.
Other improper transactions Foley said auditors found included payments for auto repairs for Putla’s personal vehicle, eye doctor bills, personal Lincoln Electric System bills and window coverings for the restaurant, which recently closed…
…The Asian Community and Cultural Center, founded in 1994, is funded by private donations as well as grants from the city and Lancaster County and hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for refugee resettlement programs. According to its website, its mission is to “support and empower Asian people while sharing our cultures with the entire community through our programs and services.”…
…Foley said the improprieties went unnoticed by two certified public accounting firms involved with the Asian Center. One firm handled day-to-day accounting functions for the center, while the second did its annual financial audit.
According to Foley’s report, Putla had complete control over the center’s finances and was the sole contact with its accountants.
Foley wrote that he “believes strongly that additional monies are likely to be missing and other payment activities may be suspect or fraudulent.”
He has submitted the audit to the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office for further investigation. Read more here
Modesta Putla would certainly not be alone in her abuse and misappropriation of public funding at agencies claiming to assist refugees. Last year the CEO of Lutheran Family Services in the Carolinas (LFS), Suzanne Gibson-Wise, was reportedly using her agency’s funds for company paid vehicles, wireless internet in her home, countless Blackberries, a personal commode, and a new $4000 office conference table — because the one that was in the office wasn’t good enough. At the same time her agency was failing to give refugees minimum-required services and material items (here). A local journalist found two Iraqi refugee brothers scrounging furniture from a dumpster because LFS hadn’t given them any furniture, and they were wearing shorts and flip-flops in December because LFS hadn’t given them any clothes when they arrived in September. LFS and its national affiliate LIRS then announced that LFS would no longer be resettling refugees in Greensboro due to “financial reasons”, here In other words, they wanted the public to believe that refugee resettlement was not viable in Greensboro – even though other agencies have continued refugee resettlement in the city.
There was also the curious case of Myra M. Oliver, the late director of the International Institute of Connecticut, who paid herself $100,000 a year while her refugee clients lived in squalor in dilapidated apartments, here. She apparently kept taking a salary as she was dying of cancer and the agency was falling apart in ’07 and ’08.
Then, there is the Grand Dame of refugee resettlement corruption, Nikki Tesfai, the founder of LA’s African Community Resource Center, here. She was the darling of ORR’s then director Lavinia Limon (now head of USCRI) and even appeared on the Oprah show, while secretly skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars from refugee resettlement contracts.
