Ethiopian Aid Appeal Is Probed

Federal and local law enforcement agencies are investigating a Camarillo-based Christian evangelical group that apparently has collected millions of dollars through emotional appeals for the starving people of Ethiopia but shows no evidence of delivering any aid to the African nation.

Bradden McKinley, chief investigator for the Ventura County district attorney’s office, said Friday that two of his men have been looking into Inter-Aid Inc. (IA), a religious fund-raising organization, for several months.

McKinley declined to reveal details of the investigation, but confirmed his office has been contacted by the U.S. Justice Department in connection with the case. The State Department said Friday that it also is investigating the matter.

Nello Panelli, a spokesman for Inter-Aid, told reporters at a press conference that recent appeals focusing on Ethiopia have increased contributions to his group, but declined to disclose current figures. In 1983, the last year for which audited figures are available, contributions totaled more than $11 million.

Claims Supplies Shipped

Panelli said that Inter-Aid--using its service organization, International Christian Aid (ICA)--shipped supplies to Ethiopia last month through a French volunteer organization, Doctors Without Borders.

In Paris, however, Dr. Rony Brauman, president of Doctors Without Borders, disputed that.

“Up to now, we have not received any financial or other contribution of any kind from International Christian Aid,” Brauman said Friday.

A spokeswoman for Catholic Relief Services--one of the private groups most active in providing aid in the drought-stricken nations of Africa--told United Press International she was concerned about groups that “claim to be working in places that they aren’t.”

“ICA does not have a presence in Ethiopia,” she said. “We have been on the ground there for 10 years and have a pretty good idea of what’s going on there.”

Never Heard of Agency

Panelli also contended that additional supplies were shipped to an Inter-Aid team working in Ethiopia in cooperation with an organization called the Christian Relief and Development Assn.

But a spokesman for the Agency for International Development, the economic aid branch of the State Department, said on Friday that no one in his office had ever heard of the Christian Relief and Development Agency--”and we’ve heard of a lot of organizations.”

Detailed figures from IA and ICA are hard to come by. Like other religious organizations, they are exempt from federal and state regulations that require nonprofit groups to record the receipt of donations and document whether the funds are spent for the purposes specified in fund-raising appeals.

IA and ICA are the offspring of Underground Evangelism, a group established by L. Joe Bass in 1960 to smuggle Bibles into Communist-ruled countries.

Fund Appeals Intensified

In recent years, the group has become increasingly involved in gathering funds to “help children in crisis” in developing countries, according to ICA literature.

The appeals for funds have intensified, with prime-time advertising on television--including the Cable News Network nationally and Channel 9 locally--that has included graphic footage of the starving peoples of Africa, with commentary about the crisis in Ethiopia.

An IA-ICA advertisement submitted to--and rejected by--The Times in late November featured a grim photograph of an emaciated African child, accompanied by the text:

“Famine Disaster! People of Ethiopia and other drought-stricken areas of Africa are dying . . . International Christian Aid is launching its ‘Famine Airlift.’ International Christian Aid’s own pilots will fly daily to remote feeding centers where thousands of starving people are massing. International Christian Aid’s own teams are on the spot, ready to distribute the airlifted emergency food to these people.”

There was no confirmation available Friday that any of these ICA activities have taken place.

(The Times refused to accept the advertisement because of reports of inadequate documentation of expenditures in previous ICA fund-raising campaigns.)

The organization’s magazine, ICA News, has focused similarly on Ethiopia. The most recent issue-- dated December, 1984-January, 1985--features commentary by Bass in which he says, in a story reportedly filed on Nov. 18:

“It is estimated that by late January or early February, the death toll will go over the 1-million mark . . . An Inter-Aid team consisting of doctors, nurses, relief workers and mainly logistic experts are flying three days from now into Ethiopia and launching an emergency feeding program.”

That is another program that has yet to be confirmed.

In its masthead, the magazine includes the names of a number of public figures, including Mayor Tom Bradley and actor Martin Sheen.

A spokesman for Bradley said Friday that the mayor had agreed earlier to serve on the Inter-Aid’s Board of Reference, but became aware of problems with the group a few days ago and sent a letter “telling them to take us off the board.”

A spokesman for Sheen said the actor has no affiliation with the group and “is quite upset” about the use of his name “without his knowledge or consent.”

In his advertising, Bass claims that only 20% of the donations collected are being spent on fund-raising appeals, “leaving the maximum possible to go to aid the children.”

But figures from the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. would indicate otherwise.

In her report dated last month, Helen O’Rourke, a Better Business Bureau vice president, commented:

“Inter-Aid Inc. does not meet the CBBB standards for charitable solicitations calling for soliciting organizations to provide on request an annual report, . . . present in (their) financial statements adequate information to serve as a basis for informed decisions, . . . spend a reasonable percentage of public contributions on the programs described in appeals, and ensure that solicitations and informational materials are accurate . . . .”

Based on 1983 data supplied by the group, O’Rourke concluded that IA spent 41% of its public contributions on relief, rather than the 80% implied by Bass. The CBBB sets a figure of 65% as its minimum acceptable standard.

Bass, a former Arkansas preacher, founded ICA in 1978, the same year that his Underground Evangelism organization was locked in a bitter court battle with another large agency engaged in evangelical outreach and Bible smuggling to Communist-ruled countries, Jesus to the Communist World.

The multimillion-dollar defamation suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by leaders of Underground Evangelism, capped more than a decade of feuding between the rival organizations and ended in an out-of-court settlement, the provisions of which were not made public.