Employment Program's Ex-Boss Pays $13 Million To Settle Misconduct
Claims
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
December 13,
2006
EL PASO, TEXAS--ReadyOne Industries, last year's largest nonprofit
to benefit from a federal program designed to employ workers with disabilities,
has settled a lawsuit with its former president over allegations of misconduct
and personal use of the organization's money.
According to the El Paso Times and The Oregonian, the organization
agreed to receive just $13.3 million -- in the form of investments and interest
-- of the more than $30 million that it had originally sought from Robert E.
"Bob" Jones.
For more than ten years, Jones ran the organization, then known as the
National Center for the Employment of the Disabled, and helped take it from
bankruptcy to the point that in 2005 it employed 4,000 workers and received
$275 million from the federal government to manufacture such things as chemical
warfare protection suits, military uniforms, and cardboard boxes under
contracts set aside for workers with disabilities under the 1938
Javits-Wagner-O'Day Act (JWOD).
Jones resigned under pressure in March after the Oregonian reported that
he had paid himself as much as $4.5 million a year in management fees while
using NCED's assets to finance his own business ventures.
During a four-hour meeting with the nonprofit's attorneys last month,
Jones refused to answer 543 questions asked of him, choosing instead to invoke
his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
The Oregonian also revealed last spring that investigators discovered
that the nonprofit could only account for 7.8 percent of its work being
performed by employees who were "blind or severely disabled". The JWOD program
requires 75 percent of the work to be performed by workers with disabilities.
The paper showed that NCED had, among other things, listed an inability to
speak English as a disability.
Details of the settlement, in which Jones does not admit any wrongdoing,
will be filed in January.
Jones is still the subject of federal fraud and tax evasion
investigations.
The U.S. Senate held hearings and investigations into allegations of
fraud and corruption of contracts under the JWOD program for more than a year.
Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, incoming chairman of the Senate
Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said last month he would
propose bipartisan legislation to tighten regulations under which $2 billion in
no-bid set-aside contracts are granted each year to nonprofits.
Related:
"Charity for disabled workers to get $13 million from
ex-chief" (Oregonian)
http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/06/red/1213g.htm
"Nonprofit
settlement provides $13 million" (El Paso Times)
http://www.elpasotimes.com/search/ci_4842708
---
Reproduced here under special arrangement
with Inclusion Daily Express international disability rights news service.
© Copyright 2006 Inonit
Publishing. Please do not reprint, publish or distribute without
permission. |
