New York State Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association (NRA) and its leadership. She explained this to press representatives on Thursday. She accuses the chief executive of the gun lobby, Wayne LaPierre, and three other defendants of having established an extensive fraud scheme in the NRA for years. This would have embezzled money for personal gain. In the past three years, the NRA has built up $ 64 million in losses due to mismanagement. Large parts of it flowed into the accounts of the defendants.
In their lawsuit, James also called for the NRA to be dissolved and LaPierre removed from his leadership position, which he has held since 1991. If the court follows the indictment, LaPierre and his three co-defendants must repay ill-gotten income and excessive salaries. In addition to LaPierre, NRA general secretary John Frazer, ex-treasurer Woody Phillips and ex-NRA director Josh Powell will also answer in court.
The NRA is arguably the most powerful lobby group in the United States. According to its own information, which is difficult to verify, it has more than five million members. She advocates the right to own guns.
James said that the NRA’s influence was so strong that it “went unchecked for decades while top executives put millions in their own pockets”. From this a “culture of self-enrichment, mismanagement and negligent supervision” developed, which she described as “illegal, suppressive and fraudulent”. This fraudulent system is so ingrained in the NRA that only dissolution can be considered.
Some of the alleged misconduct was reported in the US media in the middle of last year. You now find yourself in the lawsuit. Accordingly, LaPierre has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars from NRA assets on private air travel for himself and his family, such as trips to the Bahamas. He has rented a private charter plane for it at least eight times, the cost: $ 500,000. On many of these trips, LaPierre and his family used a 30-meter-long yacht that belonged to a business partner of the NRA. LaPierre is said to have claimed $ 1.2 million in expenses from the NRA for which there is no evidence.
Only recently, according to the lawsuit, LaPierre is said to have secured a kind of severance pay agreement worth more than $ 17 million without the approval of the Board of Directors. There are also allegations of tax fraud. LaPierre is said to have failed to disclose large parts of its exorbitant earnings. A PR company was apparently interposed for his enrichment campaigns to deceive the tax authorities. The NRA has consistently denied the allegations in the past. All spending and contract decisions were made “in the best interests of their members”. LaPierre had been paid appropriately.
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