Wyclef Jean
The musician's lawyer, Avi Schick, confirmed that Jean's Haitian aid organisation, Yele, went out of business in August, leaving a trail of legal disputes and unpaid debts. Regulators in the US, where it was registered, are now attempting to establish how the non-profit organisation burned through $16m (£10m) in public donations in just over two years.
A report in yesterday's New York Times alleged that much of the money was spent on administration, public relations and consultants, or was funnelled to outside businesses owned by friends and relations of Jean. In one mysterious transaction, detailed in Yele's tax returns, the singer's brother-in-law was given $600,000 for helping with the "rebuilding of Haiti".
In 2010, the charity devoted more than half of its $9m budget to travel, staff salaries, consultant fees and expenses related to its property portfolio, the newspaper revealed. It spent $37,000 to rent space at a Manhattan recording studio owned by Jean, and another $375,000 went on "landscaping" for its offices.
Comment: Yet nothing will happen - polls show that a majority of the American public now accept and support the use of torture. A society dehumanized to such a point, cheered on by authoritarians and their followers, will willingly accept measures that inflict pain and suffering on the 'others' without giving it a second thought.
Murder by drone without trail or the need to produce any evidence, routine killing of civilians as 'acceptable losses', isolation and torture of children at home, and the highest prison population anywhere on the planet. All are accepted without a word of protest from the majority in the U.S.