The People’s Forum, BreakThrough News and Tricontinental have all been subpoenaed by the House Ways and Means Committee for failing to produce requested documents voluntarily.
At issue is whether Singham, who now lives in Shanghai, used a network of nonprofits, shell companies and other funding mechanisms to channel money to U.S. organizations in ways that may have obscured the original source of funding and potential foreign influence.
The information the committee, chaired by Rep. Jason Smith (R-Missouri), is seeking includes:
- All documents and communications sufficient to identify any organization that has provided fiduciary oversight, financial management, or other administrative services and that has received or transmitted funds connected to foreign nationals or foreign entities.
- All contracts between the organizations and fiscally-sponsored projects that involve foreign nationals or foreign entities.
- All documents and communications between employees of the organizations and Neville Roy Singham, referring or relating to the finances, governance, or organizational structure of that organization.
- All documents and communications between employees and foreign principals referring or relating to the finances, governance, or organizational structure of the entities, including communications with:
- A government of a foreign country or a foreign political party.
- A partnership, association, corporation, organization, or other combination of persons organized under the laws of or having its principal place of business in a foreign country.
- A list of foreign nationals and foreign organizations that have donated, either directly or indirectly through other foreign nationals, foreign entities, shell companies, or donor-advised funds, more than $5,000 to the organization.
- A list of all grant recipients of the organization located outside of the United States.
The three nonprofits have engaged in: confrontation with law enforcement; shutting down bridges so that emergency vehicles can't pass; invading Colombia University, locking up janitors in closets and tearing down American flags, Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said on “Washington Watch” last week.
“This kind of activity, I think our legal system has formerly corroborated as being criminal. So, it's quite strange to see it now formally labeled as terrible and worthy of tax deductions,” Finkelstein told show host Jody Hice.
China’s spinmaster
Finkelstein says Singham is a Chinese asset whose main responsibility is advancing propaganda about “China’s bright future.”
Singham has contributed more than $200 million to various 501c3 groups — nonprofits with tax exempt status — across the U.S., Finkelstein said.
Fox News reported in March that the "No Kings" gathering protesting President Donald Trump were funded by 500 organizations totaling more than $3 billion in annual revenue.
Singham's "not-for-profit organizations have been responsible for some of the most disruptive behavior in recent protest history in the United States,” Finkelstein said.
Foreign exploitation of willing nonprofit groups is clear, Finkelstein said.
“You have groups like the Tri-Continental Institute. This is an organization that, I'm not kidding, works with known Iranian assets to pull in 501c3s and not-for-profits across America in order to better indoctrinate them for protest activity in the United States.
“These are groups like Breakthrough Media, which on the day of Oct. 7 was taking foreign terrorist organizations and hosting them, members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, involved in the attack, and interviewing them during fundraisers,” Finkelstein continued.
Singham is an American software entrepreneur, former technology executive, and political activist best known for founding the global IT consulting firm Thoughtworks.
He sold the firm in 2017 for a reported $785 million, shifting his attention and energy to funding left-wing political, media and activist organizations around the world.
He is married to Jodie Evans, founder of the radical anti-war activist organization CODEPINK.
Singham, who has also been linked to China’s efforts to block the American build-up of artificial intelligence and data centers, has denied wrongdoing, and no criminal charges have been announced.
The academic climate
China’s influence extends far beyond the nonprofit groups, Finkelstein said.
“There is an epidemic of hostile foreign control that has seized our institutions, and that's true of our universities. It's true, especially in our charitable section.”
The committee’s investigation is a sign that Americans are beginning to wake up to the problem, he said.
“This has been happening at an unimaginable scale, and we haven't been awake to the fact that our democracy is being subverted beneath us using the freedoms it engenders by the enemies that are most hostile to it,” Finkelstein said.
