Sean Penn and Vladimir Zelensky in Kyiv, November 2022
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
The rich and famous find time and money for charitable causes. Some of them devote a lot of their time to this, opening special funds, while trading, as they say, in person and collecting considerable sums from people under various pretexts.
One of the most titled movie actors of our time, American Sean Penn has long been known as one of Hollywood’s biggest philanthropists. It all began almost twenty years ago, with his trip to New Orleans, where he actively provided assistance to the victims of the deadly Hurricane Katrina. Penn then registered the CORE charitable foundation (eng. “Core”).
But if a few months ago they wrote about CORE as one of the saviors of millions of human lives from COVID-19, then the latest Bloomberg research presents it as an extremely dubious organization that spends the funds raised on a beautiful life and showing off in front of the cameras. And by the way, Sean Penn’s sensational visit to see Zelensky in Kyiv last year was no exception. But first things first.
Sean Penn has long been known as one of Hollywood’s biggest philanthropists.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
brazilian motifs
CORE’s troubles began with a party Penn threw a little over a year ago at a Miami club. During cocktail parties, guests were encouraged to donate to the CORE box office; there was also an auction that sold a sketch by the artist Andy Warhol, and the Brazilian pop singer Anitta performed some songs for the guests.
It was Anitta who became the unwitting culprit in the scandal, in which both Core and Sean Penn fell personally. He took the stage for free only because Penn personally promised him that all funds raised from this party would be sent to his foundation in Brazil, Anitta’s homeland, where the government did not have the strength or funds to fight the coronavirus. .
Neither Anitta nor actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who was among the guests and brought a considerable amount to the CORE box office, did not even have doubts about the sincerity of the fund’s intentions: in the first year of the pandemic, CORE brought much more. help the people of California than the state government by providing millions of people with free tests and vaccinations. But even six months after the party in Miami, it turned out that Core did not transfer a single penny to Brazil.
Brazilian pop star Anitta.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
As is now known, this was closely followed by journalists from the Bloomberg agency, who long ago began to investigate the unscrupulous activities of the Penn Foundation. Among other things, they learned that Core closed its activities in Brazil… the day before the fundraiser in Miami.
debit with credit
The fund manager told the agency that it has every right to use the funds raised for some projects for others, while stating that some money came to Brazil and was spent as follows: $90,000 for the salary of a single employee, a quarter of a million dollars to cover some entertainment expenses, and almost half a million more – for various types of programs unrelated to COVID-19. Meanwhile, only at a party in Miami for Brazil, 1.6 million dollars were raised.
Several current and former CORE employees have agreed to speak to Bloomberg reporters on condition of anonymity. They said that “the gap between the Sean Penn Foundation’s stated goals and its actions” began to appear a long time ago.
For example, it turned out that sexual harassment flourished among the fund’s staff. Employee complaints were either ignored by CORE management or dismissed as unfounded. At the same time, some whistleblowers were not only fired, but also threatened. So far, nothing has been reported as to whether such accusations were made against Sean Penn himself and whether he himself knew what was going on.
Luxury at someone else’s expense
But the Oscar-winning actor regularly signed off on Core’s financial reports. And an independent audit confirmed that the huge sums received from the donors, the charitable foundation that pays no taxes to the treasury, spent huge amounts renting luxurious rooms in expensive hotels, ceremonial receptions and flights on private ocean liners.
The auditors paid special attention to the fact that huge sums were spent on the work of photographers. And we found that in recent years, the photographers that were paid by CORE were located in almost every part of the world where people needed help. They recorded the work of volunteers (not their own, of course), the rescue services, the restoration process of what was destroyed during hostilities or natural disasters, and the CORE leadership used these photos as evidence of their active and very expensive.
Ukrainian earnings
The CORE photo gallery contains many photos from Ukraine. Above them, Sean Penn himself, in Kyiv, Dnipro, with Zelensky, from whom he received the order.
Gift exchange with Zelensky: Ukrainian order for an Oscar statuette.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
A week after the start of the special operation of Russian troops in Ukraine, Penn appeared on American television screens, where he spoke about the allegedly incredible scale of assistance to Ukrainians on behalf of CORE. Millions poured into the fund account. But Bloomberg managed to find only three volunteers who worked for this fund, and even then two of them were not in Ukraine at all, but only in Poland and Romania. But the one who was sent to Nezalezhnaya told an interesting fact: the Core management imposed on him as fellow travelers … two professional photographers who only did what they took and sent photos to America. CORE continues to publish hundreds of photos to this day, illustrating fictional stories about their activities in Ukraine.
