'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
D.C. Attorney General Irvin B. Nathan filed a false claims complaint Tuesday against the nonprofit group Miracle Hands and its director, reformed gangster Cornell Jones, charging them with misappropriating more than $300,000 from the city's HIV/AIDS program for renovations on a proposed job training center in Northeast that instead was used to open a high-end strip club.
The D.C. Health Department does not have copies of its own records of a nonprofit company run by a convicted drug dealer that received more than $400,000 in grants to renovate a job-training center that was never completed.
A nonprofit group run by a convicted drug kingpin who campaigned for Mayor Vincent C. Gray is the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General into its use of public funds, according to a letter by a senior official with the District HIV/AIDS Administration.
D.C. Council member David A. Catania has asked the city's attorney general to investigate whether a nonprofit group directed by a former drug kingpin applied for and received city funds to renovate a warehouse to help HIV/AIDS sufferers, then used the money to prepare the property for sale and eventual use as a strip club.
A controversial strip club in Northeast Washington is operating with a liquor license reserved in 2007 for a blighted warehouse property owned by a convicted drug kingpin who at the time was receiving city funds to renovate the site as a job-training center for ex-offenders, records show.
Mayoral candidate Vincent C. Gray attended a picnic last month organized by a small nonprofit that works with ex-offenders and is run by a man who was once one of Washington, D.C.'s most notorious underworld figures. That much no one disputes.
