Black Lives Matter Hemorrhaged Cash in 2022, Tax Documents Show

Black Lives Matter bled cash and suffered blistering investment losses in 2022, according to a copy of its tax return obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation ran an $8.5 million deficit and saw the value of its investment accounts plummet by nearly $10 million in the most recent tax year, financial disclosures show. The group logged a $961,000 loss on a securities sale of $172,000, suggesting the charity weathered a staggering 85 percent loss on the transaction. These troubles didn’t stop BLM from doling out seven-figure contracts to friends and family of its former executive director Patrisse Cullors, who once said charity financial disclosures were “triggering” and “deeply unsafe.”

It’s no surprise that Cullors was so fearful of disclosing Black Lives Matter’s finances to the public. The revelations in Black Lives Matter’s latest Form 990 show that the group is on the fast track to financial insolvency, and that the excesses of Cullors’s tenure have not abated under her chosen successor, Shalomyah Bowers.

The financial losses come after a year of missteps and setbacks for the embattled charity. BLM raised just $9.3 million in its 2022 fiscal year, down 88 percent from its haul the year prior. {snip} The group has blown through two-thirds of the $90 million it raised in the wake of George Floyd’s death in the summer of 2020.

BLM spent about $12 million of those funds on luxury homes in Los Angeles and Toronto. That profligacy did not abate in the 2022 fiscal year, when the charity dropped more than $10.5 million on contractors, much of which went to companies linked to Cullors’s friends and family.

Cullors’s brother, Paul Cullors, made out especially well. A graffiti artist with no prior experience as a bodyguard, Paul Cullors and his two companies raked in $1.6 million providing “professional security services” for Black Lives Matter in 2022. Paul Cullors was also one of BLM’s only two paid employees during the year, collecting a $126,000 salary as “head of security” on top of his consulting fees.

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Bowers, the Black Lives Matter board member and close friend of Cullors, hauled in a hefty bounty during the charity’s 2022 tax year. Black Lives Matter paid his company, Bowers Consulting, $1.7 million for management and consulting services.

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The sister of former Black Lives Matter board member Raymond Howard brought in a seven-figure consulting fee as well. {snip}

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