District of Corruption

Washington, D.C., has the highest rate of AIDS in the country, and millions of federal dollars are spent trying to alleviate it. But a new investigative piece uncovers a corrupt system where books were cooked, corners cut, and $400,000 lost to a nonprofit launched by the leader of a cocaine ring.

The Washington Post:

In a city ravaged by the highest rate of AIDS cases in the nation, the D.C. Health Department paid millions to nonprofit groups that delivered substandard services or failed to account for any work at all, even as sick people searched for care or died waiting.

More than $1 million in AIDS money went to a housing group whose ailing boarders sometimes struggled without electricity, gas or food. A supervisor said she was ordered to create records for ghost employees.

About $400,000 was paid to a nonprofit organization, launched by a man who once ran one of the District’s largest cocaine rings, for a promised job-training center that has never opened.

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More than 15,000 people have HIV or AIDS in the nation’s capital—3 percent of the population older than 12.