A Black Lives Matter organizer within the UK metropolis of Bristol has admitted to stealing cash from a fundraising web page arrange forward of an indication in 2020 throughout which a outstanding statue was toppled, The Instances reported on Tuesday.
In accordance with the report, 23-year-old Xahra Saleem pleaded responsible to 1 rely of fraud final week after an alleged £30,000 ($36,400) went lacking from a crowdfunding web page she had organized.
A self-described screenwriter, Saleem, who additionally goes by Yvonne Maina, was one of many 5 organizers of the Bristol BLM protest on June 7, 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd by a police officer within the US. She was additionally the co-founder of the All Black Lives Bristol group and had at one level even been named one of the vital influential individuals below the age of 30 in Bristol by an area youth publication.
A number of days earlier than the 2020 BLM protest throughout which a statue of Edward Colsten was knocked over, Saleem opened up a donation web page on GoFundMe referred to as BristBLM the place she requested for assist masking the prices of the demonstration and paying for protecting tools for the protesters.
She additionally entered an settlement with a Bristol youth charity group referred to as Altering Your Mindset, vowing to donate to the group any cash left over from the fundraising. Nonetheless, regardless of the GoFundMe web page happening to boost tens of hundreds of {dollars}, the charity by no means obtained any of the cash and ultimately needed to shut down, prompting the Avon and Somerset police to launch an investigation into the fundraising web page.
Saleem has turn into the newest BLM activist to have been discovered stealing cash from a fundraiser arrange within the title of the supposedly anti-racism motion. Final 12 months, Black Lives Matter Boston chief Monica Cannon-Grant and her husband Clark Grant had been indicted for defrauding donors to their nonprofit and stealing over $1 million in grants and donations. That very same 12 months, the chief of the Black Lives Matter International Community Basis (BLMGNF), Shalomyah Bowers, was additionally accused of stealing greater than $10 million in donations from the group for private use.
Moreover, in 2021, BLMGNF co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors discovered herself on the middle of a media storm after it was revealed that she and two different BLM members had bought a virtually $6 million mansion in one among southern California’s whitest neighborhoods utilizing cash that had been donated to the group.
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