Milo Yiannopoulos in Damage Control Mode as Shady Grant Gets the Spotlight

January of this year, media glamour star Milo Yiannopoulos announced through Buzzfeed[1] a “Privilege Grant” exclusively for white men[2]. The website for the grant stated “Applications will open in Spring 2016. Privilege Grants will be awarded in early Summer 2016 to be available for Fall 2016 enrollment.” The grant was hyped through April all the while garnering over a hundred thousand dollars in donations. Yet, no money has been given out, and this has led to some highly questionable practices being brought to light.

In a series of tweets[3], “New Normal Bot” revealed the existence of a PLC opened in December 2014 was being used for the Privilege Grant[4] that dissolved in May 2016[5]. The evidence presented would suggest the money was being funneled to a shell company run by Mr. Yiannopoulos instead of a charity.

Collaborating with these findings, Margaret MacLennon showed after being questioned that the funding went straight to the same address as the PLC in Mr. Yiannopoulos’s name.[4] This is despite the website explicitly stating on its donate page “ All donations made to the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant go directly to recipients.”[5].

The Daily Beast has also published a piece[6] by Gideon Resnick about this scandal. In it, Mr. Resnick alleges that “the way in which the “Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant” accepted donations was unethical and possibly illegal”. It goes on to give quotes from legal experts elaborating on the legal aspects of charities. The article also claims members of the Privilege Grant denied the connection to Caligula Limited.

I reached out to Miss MacLennan to find out more about her participation in the grant (full interview can be read here[7]):

JK: How did you become Director of the Privilege Grant, and what responsibilities did you hold?
 
MM: Milo asked me about being the director of the Grant in January. It was perfect for cheek — a gay British male and a disabled Canadian female both running a bursary for the one group that doesn’t get to be a group — straight white men. It’s all well and fun as a troll, but behind the joke is the fact that post secondary can really change a life and that unless you’re in a victim group, you won’t get those few thousand extra bucks every year that can really make a difference in being able to attend. I was mostly going to be a public face that worked on the admin side of things. I’ve worked for years in customer service and secretarial occupations so I was happy with that, but I knew that we had a viciously steep timeline if we wanted to hand out awards by Fall 2016.

JK: Also on twitter you revealed the money for the Privilege Grant was forwarded directly to Mr. Yiannpoulos. Did you intend this as a means of showing potentially shady dealings?
 
MM: I posted the original PDF document that everyone who wanted to donate to the Grant was sent. I basically had it memorized because I wrote all the copy for the form letters I sent back to people.
 
At this point I’m concerned about the donors. Everything I tweet out should be taken with a grain of salt and investigated. Even though it’s a standard form, I know that bank transfer information is sexier than “hey, the Grant applications are late” and I hoped that others would notice it and notice that there are no applications to be had.
 
Later we added Swype as a secure means to sending money with a debit or credit card, and then the Store front where “proceeds” (I don’t know exactly what that entails) would go toward the Grant. I did not have access to the store’s financial information so I don’t know how much came from there.

JK: In your personal opinion, do you believe the privilege grant will eventually deliver? Also, do you believe reparations should be made to the donors in light of the delays?
 
MM: Because of the delays the donors should be able to request refunds, but it’s hard to request a refund of a bank transfer. You can get a refund easily through paypal, but not so much through the methods used by the Grant. I don’t know what info the bank would have, whether they would have names and contact info connected to dollar amounts in the bank account — there’s just so much muddled up that has to be untangled. I don’t think the Grant can deliver on this Spring 2017 promise. There’s just not enough time. Unless donors are pleased and happy with how the next few days are handled, that will be the determinant of whether the Grant will ever come to light.