《华盛顿邮报》的报道发现存在欺诈

 　　HARI SREENIVASAN: A startling report in today’s Washington Post, the newspaper says more than a thousand of the nation’s non-profits have each acknowledged losses of a quarter million dollars or more, because of theft, investment fraud, embezzlement¹ or other unauthorized use of funds.

　　The report is based on tax filings by the non-profits during the past five years.

　　Each non-profit disclosed the problem by checking a box on the tax form indicating what’s called a significant diversion of funds. For more about all this, we’re joined from Washington by Joe Stevens, he’s an investigative reporter for the Post and the co-author of today’s piece.

　　So your article says just the ten largest losses you’ve identified add up to more than five hundred million dollars, give us some examples.

　　JOE STEPHENS: That’s right, almost half a billion dollars, they’re all across the board, all kinds of non-profits and major amounts, the largest potential amount lost we found was a hundred and six million dollars, that was to Yeshiva University and its affiliates², they got caught up in the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, which is pretty famous, and actually a lot of non-profits got caught up in that and alot of those lost tens of millions of dollars to that Ponzi scheme, so that was a major source of losses, however there were a lot of large losses from many different sorts of scams and schemes, there’s aglobal fund to fight AIDS, they had a problem, they found that they had tens of millions of dollars had gone missing through a whole range of financial problems, they’re working at getting some of that money back.

　　There’s also the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany which, pays reparations of a sort to victims of the Holocaust³. They were victims of a scheme involving some insiders and they took tens of millions of dollars that were supposed to go to Holocaust survivors⁴. Some of these are sort of horrifying⁵ to hear about, and these groups a lot of them, they’ve lost a lot of trust.

　　A lot of these schemes involved insiders, executive directors, bookkeepers, very trusted long time volunteers sometimes, and you find ten million here, ten million there, but it also goes all the way downto your neighborhood groups, boy scout⁶ groups, volunteer fire departments, and non-profits across the board are losing a lot of money and a lot of this hasn’t been known because to begin with, in the past, before 2008, they didn’t have to disclose like they do now.

　　They have to actually check a box on an annual disclosure report. They also, what we found is the new reporting requirements, require you not only to check that box, that you attach a description of what happened to your annual disclosure form.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: In your reporting there, it actually shows that not everybody chose to disclose what was happening, and so, this is , when you’re looking at these findings, which are startling, but this is of the people who chose to disclose it, of the people who actually check the box, of the people who are actually registered of all the non-profits that are out there. So really, how much bigger is this problem?

　　JOE STEPHENS: That’s exactly right. The thousand, more than a thousand we found are just a sliver⁷ ofthe total universe and it makes it almost impossible to estimate how big the losses are, but they obviously are larger than we had known, and a lot of gritty details in these reports, but the other major finding of our investigation⁸ is that an awful lot of these groups aren’t giving out many details.

　　Even the ones who checked the box, said we had a major, significant diversion as they’re called. They don’t disclose exactly what happened. A lot of them don’t give an amount. Some of them just say call for an explanation. Some don’t put down anything. So it raises a lot of questions about really what’sgoing on out there, how bad is this, well what we’ve seen is bad enough.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Do you think that this could cause a deterrent⁹ effect in people giving, or what could people do to be smarter about it and hold the organizations that they donate to more accountable?

　　JOE STEPHENS: Well just because a group has been victimized, isn’t in and of itself, doesn’t mean it’s a bad organization or they did anything wrong.

　　But the experts say this should be a sign to donors¹⁰, to supporters, to volunteers, if you see this on the form, go your group and say what happened, give us details and what have you done to make sure there is not a reoccurrence?

　　And to help in this, at the Post we took all the data we collected, readers can now go to our website,they can search for themselves, we put together the first public searchable database of these significant diversions, you can put in the name of your city, your state, your favorite group, and you can seeif they have disclosed a significant diversion if so you can click, go directly to the form and read what they said, and if you’re not satisfied, experts say the next step is pick up the phone, call that group and ask them what happened.

　　HARI SREENIVASAN: Joe Stevens from the Washington Post, thanks so much.

　　JOE STEPHENS:Thank you.

1 embezzlement   

n.盗用，贪污

参考例句：

• He was accused of graft and embezzlement and was chained and thrown into prison.他因被指控贪污盗窃而锒铛入狱。
• The judge sent him to prison for embezzlement of funds.法官因他盗用公款将其送入监牢。

2 affiliates   

附属企业( affiliate的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• She affiliates with an academic society. 她是某学术团体的成员。
• For example, these security affiliates participated in the floating of 19,000,000,000 of issues in 1927. 例如，这些证券发行机构在1927年的流通证券中，就提供了一百九十亿美元的证券。

3 holocaust   

n.大破坏；大屠杀

参考例句：

• The Auschwitz concentration camp always remind the world of the holocaust.奥辛威茨集中营总是让世人想起大屠杀。
• Ahmadinejad is denying the holocaust because he's as brutal as Hitler was.内贾德否认大屠杀，因为他像希特勒一样残忍。

4 survivors   

幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The survivors were adrift in a lifeboat for six days. 幸存者在救生艇上漂流了六天。
• survivors clinging to a raft 紧紧抓住救生筏的幸存者

5 horrifying   

a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的

参考例句：

• He went to great pains to show how horrifying the war was. 他极力指出战争是多么的恐怖。
• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate. 战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。

6 scout   

n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索

参考例句：

• He was mistaken for an enemy scout and badly wounded.他被误认为是敌人的侦察兵，受了重伤。
• The scout made a stealthy approach to the enemy position.侦察兵偷偷地靠近敌军阵地。

7 sliver   

n.裂片，细片，梳毛；v.纵切，切成长片，剖开

参考例句：

• There was only one sliver of light in the darkness.黑暗中只有一点零星的光亮。
• Then,one night,Monica saw a thin sliver of the moon reappear.之后的一天晚上，莫尼卡看到了一个月牙。

8 investigation   

n.调查，调查研究

参考例句：

• In an investigation,a new fact became known, which told against him.在调查中新发现了一件对他不利的事实。
• He drew the conclusion by building on his own investigation.他根据自己的调查研究作出结论。

9 deterrent   

n.阻碍物，制止物；adj.威慑的，遏制的

参考例句：

• Large fines act as a deterrent to motorists.高额罚款是对开车的人的制约。
• I put a net over my strawberries as a deterrent to the birds.我在草莓上罩了网，免得鸟歇上去。

10 donors   

n.捐赠者( donor的名词复数 )；献血者；捐血者；器官捐献者

参考例句：

• Please email us to be removed from our active list of blood donors. 假如你想把自己的名字从献血联系人名单中删去，请给我们发电子邮件。
• About half this amount comes from individual donors and bequests. 这笔钱大约有一半来自个人捐赠及遗赠。 来自《简明英汉词典》