The House Ways and Means Committee has subpoenaed three nonprofits tied to Shanghai-based tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham for allegedly failing to turn over a “single responsive document” to earlier requests for information.
The Tuesday subpoenas come as part of an investigation into more than $39 million that Mr. Singham poured into the organizations.
They were issued to The People’s Forum Inc., which describes itself as providing “space for cultural and education events relevant for marginalized communities;” BreakThrough News, which says it tells the “stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities;” and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, which promotes the “advances made by the range of theories of national liberation Marxism.”
The State Department told Congress in February that The People’s Forum is linked to Chinese influence operations, and that China spreads propaganda through campaigns run by the organization and other groups linked with the “notorious Singham network.”
Mr. Singham, a U.S. citizen, has funded Chinese Communist Party-supporting organizations — a notion backed by numerous investigations — but he has said that he does not work for the CCP.
Three near-identical letters sent to the organizations reject their legal objections to prior document requests and announce that the committee is now issuing subpoenas, with a deadline of Aug. 7.
“Your responses have failed to include a single responsive document and misrepresented both the scope and purpose of the Committee’s oversight,” the committee, led by Chair Jason Smith, Missouri Republican, wrote. “Accordingly, the Committee is invoking compulsory process to obtain the requested materials.”
It cites a March report that found donor-advised funds linked to Mr. Singham sent more than $1 million to BreakThrough News between 2022 and 2023, more than $16 million to Tricontinental between 2017 and 2022 and more than $22 million to The People’s Forum between 2017 and 2022.
The letters describe the money as “channeled through shell companies and donor-advised funds,” structures the committee says are “by design” meant to “obscure the original source of the contribution.” The funding is described as reaching each tax-exempt organization through “foreign-linked capital layered through shell entities and donor-advised funds.”
Mr. Singham funneled $278 million through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised fund and two now-defunct shell companies to six core U.S. nonprofits, including the three now facing subpoenas, according to a Fox News Digital report cited in the letters.
Funding continued even after it “had been the subject of extensive public reporting,” and Goldman Sachs terminated the donor-advised fund in early 2024 at its “own exercise of discretion, rather than by any statutory disclosure obligation,” the letters read.
A federal grand jury is also investigating alleged financial crimes committed by Mr. Singham, which include wire fraud, bank fraud and money laundering within his financial network.
The letters characterize this as “the type of funding arrangement the Committee is examining in considering whether legislative reform is warranted,” and describe it as raising “significant concerns regarding foreign influence over a tax-exempt organization.”
A committee spokesperson pointed to legislation advanced by the committee Wednesday aimed at increasing transparency in the tax-exempt sector and preventing foreign influence, such as foreign funding disclosure, fiscal sponsorship transparency and restrictions on foreign-funded political activity.
The committee clarified in the letter that its inquiry is directed at the financing arrangements and organizational structure, not at the groups’ speech, editorial positions or political viewpoints.
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