IRS Complaint Filed Against Prof. Shukla’s Nonprofit

WASHINGTON – Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Cause of Action (CoA) filed a joint complaint asking the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the Institute of Global Environment and Society, Inc. (IGES), an organization that has received over $60 million in federal grants.

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IGES is headed by George Mason University Professor Dr. Jagadish Shukla, one of the “RICO-20” professors who are urging the White House to use racketeering charges to silence the global warming debate. According to the complaint, while IGES’s public purpose is to engage in climate research, in reality it exists to illegally benefit Shukla and his family. Dr. Shukla and IGES are the center of a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology into its abuse of federal grants. Dr. Shukla is the lead signer of a widely publicized letter, issued on Sept. 1, 2015, calling for the use of RICO (the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) to investigate organizations that have supposedly “deceived the American people” by disputing alarmist global warming claims. The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s General Counsel Sam Kazman said, “It’s incredibly ironic that while Dr. Shukla accuses global warming skeptics of deceiving the public, his own environmental organization has been pulling a fast one at taxpayer expense. His attempt to use RICO to silence public debate is groundless, and so is his organization’s tax-exempt status.” Cause of Action’s Executive Director Dan Epstein said, “It is clear that Dr. Shukla and his family are privately profiting from the funds directed to IGES. Benefits for nonprofits exist in our tax code for organizations which are helping the community and educating the public. An abuse of federal funds by a nonprofit is clear grounds for revoking its tax-exempt status, and the IRS should seriously consider this complaint and revoke IGES’s tax status.” IGES describes itself as a non-profit, tax exempt research institute “established to improve understanding and prediction of the variations of the Earth’s climate through scientific research on climate variability and climate predictability.” IGES’s monetary contributions are derived solely from federal funds. The evidence also reveals that the Shuklas conducted a scheme designed to unlawfully funnel federal funds from IGES to another non-profit entity that they themselves controlled. This strongly suggests that Dr. and Ms. Shukla, through their control of IGES and related entities, have violated rules prohibiting self-dealing and private benefit transactions. You can find the IRS complaint here.