Oglala Sioux Tribe President and Counsel Close To Qualifying For IRS Fraud Investigation
The Oglala Sioux Tribal Council
apparently needs more money to travel on. A council meeting
was aired on KILI radio 90.1 F. M., Aug. 4th, 2010 where they
recently voted to add just under $150,000.00 to their travel budget
after being presented with the Treasurers report. Apparently the
voting on this issue was tied at 7 for and 7 against. Ms. Theresa
Two Bulls, of whom we have documentation where she is delinquent as of
March, 2010 in her reporting of expenses in the amount of $71,352.36,
broke the tie in favor of the increase. Her reasoning…She
indicated that she needed more money to travel to Washington D. C… to
get more money… and have dinner with United States President Barack
Obama where they included $15,000.00 for special trips to D. C.
In the OST Treasurers report from Jan.
1st, 2010 thru Mar. 31st, 2010 they report in the
General Fund that council is allowed a salary of $21,000.00 and travel
expenses of $25,000.00 totaling $46,000.00. In the Indirect Cost
budget council is allowed an additional $21,000.00 for salaries and
$2,000.00 for travel totaling $23,000.00. The General Fund and
Indirect Cost budget combined allows council $69,000.00 altogether for
wages and travel expenses. With the additional $6,000.00 worth of
travel that was voted on and approved on Aug. 4th, 2010 the
individual council member totals for salary and travel are $74,000.00.
In that same report the Tribal
President Theresa Two Bulls and in the General Fund receives a salary of
$53,500.00 and is allowed up to $35,000.00 in travel expenses totaling
$88,500.00. In the Indirect Cost budget the President receives an
additional salary of $33,000.00 and travel expenses of $10,000.00
totaling $43,000.00. With the new addition of $6,000.00 for travel
the Presidents totals for salary and travel is $137,500.00. But
that is not all because the Treasurers report also includes a budget
titled General Fund “Other” where they allow for an additional
$25,000.00 worth of travel to Washington, D. C., most of which goes to
the Tribal President. The Tribe could potentially be paying the
Tribal President $162,500.00 in salaries and travel expenses and that is
not including the $15,000.00 recently approved for even more D. C.
trips. And they want more money to travel on? It just seems
like they created their own personal cash cow with travel expenses.
The readers may remember that Native
Sun News has been periodically publishing articles about excessive
council travel. I’m sure that readers are aware that the travel
issue is a problem within our tribal government. However most
folks chose to remain silent and will only speak during the voting
season when they cast their votes for the candidate of their choice.
Alternatively, the tribal council folks are still free to abuse travel
expenses. But that freedom is more than likely going to come to a
halt very soon.
In my most recent Native Sun News
article I reported to the public that the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI), Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and the
Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) don’t seem to care about the travel
expense abuse that some current members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal
Council have been involved in. Attempting to get justice and
always being a one man show, I have been very frustrated with getting
the attention of the proper officials to report the travel expense
abuse. But thanks to Native Sun News and its worldwide
distribution coverage an old acquaintance read my article and contacted
me with some interesting information.
Basically, I have found out through
this person who is retired and is currently living in Oklahoma that when
Travel Reports are not filed in a timely manner and after a period of 30
to 90 days that travel money becomes a “receivable” on the accounting
books of the Tribe and a loan to the traveler. Then if the
travel reports are still not completed and filed by the end of the year
for that individual person, the travel money becomes income to
the traveler. The Tribal Financial Accounting Office folks are
supposed to issue a 1099 form which is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Miscellaneous Income Reporting form, to the traveler to fill out and to
report the additional income of travel expenses and that report goes to
the IRS as a part of their annual income tax return filing cycle.
This is where the individual Tribal Council members are going to be
delinquent in reporting of additional income to the IRS.
The impact is, IRS identifies the
travel money as being converted into income and the traveler must now
pay income taxes on the travel expenses. If the income tax has not
been properly reported then the IRS can and will charge the individual
with tax evasion. Currently there are more than several tribal
officials throughout the country who have been sent to prison for this
same exact violation. The Oglala Sioux Tribe has several Tribal
Council members who seem to fit into the category of not properly
reporting the additional income that they have received in the form of
travel expenses. This means they are ripe for charges of tax
evasion from the IRS.
So finally there might be relief and
light at the end of this never ending tunnel of misappropriation and
abuse of financial obligations by our elected tribal officials.
Finally, there might be some justice being issued by a federal agency in
terms of identifying those individual council members and finding out
exactly how much money they have stolen from the Oglala Sioux Tribe and
its members. Be strong, stay safe, ignore the illusion and fight
for the truth.