The head of Black Lives Matter’s administrative arm is accused of “siphoning” more than $10 million from the movement’s donors into his consulting firm, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles.
The lawsuit describes Shalomyah Bowers, the board secretary for the nonprofit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (GNF), as a “rouge [sic] administrator, a middleman, turned usurper,” who was hired to collect donations and track costs for the fund but “could not let go of his personal piggy bank.”
He allegedly redirected donations for Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc. — a separate organization that represents the movement’s various chapters and is the lawsuit’s plaintiff — to his personal business, Bowers Consulting Firm.
More specifically, the lawsuit accuses Mr. Bowers of issuing GNF grants to his own consulting firm and to other organizations that agreed to hire the firm.
Bowers Consulting was paid $2,167,894 in 2021 by the GNF, according to federal tax filings reported on by the New York Post.
The lawsuit also accuses Mr. Bowers of changing the passwords to social media accounts, effectively locking out activists from accessing them.
“[Bowers] continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties,” the lawsuit says. “His actions have led GNF into multiple investigations by the Internal Revenue Service and various state attorney generals, blazing a path of irreparable harm to BLM in less than eighteen months.”
Mr. Bowers spoke to the Post on Saturday, and called the lawsuit a “power move by someone hellbent on achieving power and control” of the BLM movement.
“It’s the most insane thing I’ve read in a court pleading, and it’s signed under penalty of perjury when they know it’s a lie,” Bowers added, who told the Post that GNF has also undergone audits that do not show $10 million going to him or his firm.
A statement on BLM’s website called the allegations by Melina Abdullah, the head of Black Lives Matter Grassroots, as “slanderous and devoid of reality.”
Mr. Bowers was tapped by movement co-founder Patrisse Cullors to run the GNF in September 2020, the lawsuit says.
Ms. Cullors said Mr. Bowers didn’t have the ambition to “take over and run” BLM, according to the lawsuit.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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