The N&O reports today on the indictment handed down to state Rep. Stephen LaRoque (R-Greene, Lenoir, Wayne) involving his illegal handling of government grant money to nonprofit groups he ran:
State Rep. Stephen LaRoque, chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee, was indicted Tuesday by a federal grand jury in Raleigh on charges of theft and money-laundering stemming from his enterprise that makes federal loans to struggling businesses.
LaRoque, 48, a Republican from Kinston, is accused of using hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funds to enrich himself and benefit his wife and close associates over a 15-year period.
Get the details here.
On a related note, the Civitas Institute created this handy guide showing citizens how they can track government grant money and investigate the nonprofits receiving such funds. An investigation by Civitas at the time revealed that “Funding for over 1,000 recipients of North Carolina state grants has been suspended, repeatedly in many cases, mainly for not filing required annual reports of how the money was spent, but many of them still received additional grants. By the time many of the grants were suspended, however, the funds had already been spent with no accounting for how the money was used.”
All you citizens watchdogs out there concerned about where our tax dollars are going – have at it.
Also, be sure to register for our July 27-28 Citizen Watchdog training seminar – featuring James O’Keefe.
[…] Tracking government grants. […]