(JTA) — A ministers’ group has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate a sponsor of the National Prayer Breakfast for receiving money from a group that funds terrorism.
The Ohio-based ClergyVoice said in its complaint to the IRS commissioner that the Fellowship Foundation, a politically well-connected religious organization that sponsors the breakfast, should have its tax-exempt status removed because it received money six years ago from an alleged Islamic terrorist organization, The Washington Post reported.
The foundation told the newspaper that it received two checks of $25,000 in 2004, in May and June, from the Islamic American Relief Agency based in Missouri. The agency was on a list of groups that finance terror put out that year by the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, according to the Post. Federal agents closed down the Islamic American Relief Agency in October 2004.
Last July, a former Michigan congressman, Mark Siljander, pleaded guilty in a federal courthouse in Kansas City, Mo., to charges of obstruction of justice and acting as an unregistered foreign agent as a lobbyist for the agency in order to have it removed from a U.S. Senate list of charities suspected of having terrorist ties.
Siljander was an associate of the foundation when the donation was received, according to the Post.
The Fellowship Foundation told the Post that it has tightened its vetting of donors.
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