A nonprofit that took hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to spur a Harlem renaissance spent the cash on a trip to the Caribbean and a worthless Web site.
The Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce used its $282,000 federal grant, secured by Rep. Charles Rangel, on a parade of dubious projects.
Money from the Small Business Administration went to send five chamber reps to a crooked 2008 conference in St. Maarten — a sojourn that eventually cost Rangel his powerful Ways and Means Committee chairmanship and led to the criminal conviction of the event organizer.
The trip cost taxpayers $8,901.
Lloyd Williams, the president of the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce and the affiliated Harlem Week Inc., refused to answer questions about the SBA cash.
Williams’ for-profit production business is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by both nonprofits.
The group claims it spent some $70,000 from the grant on a Harlem tourism Web site in 2008. But the Web site, HarlemTourismNow.com, no longer functions.
Another questionable “tourism” venture involved the publication of a spiral-bound booklet called “Signs of the Times” that was described as a “study that chronicles the impact of the recession” on businesses.
But the “study” is merely hundreds of black and white photos of shuttered storefronts.
The SBA money “was allocated, but where did it go? Not one loan was given out, and not one business was saved — just this damned booklet,” fumed a disgusted banker who attended Greater Harlem meetings on improving small businesses.