USAID funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Soros-linked nonprofits

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funneled, for many years, hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits linked to progressive tycoon George Soros.

According to a report by Just The News, the East-West Management Institute, backed in part by Soros' Open Society Foundation, received more than $260 million from USAID over the years with the goal of advancing Serbia's European Union accession negotiations, promoting the rule of law in Georgia, strengthening civil society in Uganda, among other issues.

East-West Management Institute is one of the nonprofits that explain, in part, USAID questioning from the Trump administration, Elon Musk and conservative critics.

In 2018, Judicial Watch revealed government records showing that the organization had come under scrutiny during the Obama administration for the "Justice for All" campaign in Albany, which had received $9,000,000 in USAID funding.

According to the report, the Soros-backed organization "used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country's socialist government to push for "highly controversial judicial reform."

Critics of USAID claim that the agency had moved away from its primary goal of providing humanitarian aid in times of severe crisis to instead funding organizations that support progressive ideological causes, such as LGBT activism, abortion initiatives abroad or controversial judicial reforms overseas.

Consistent with the Albanian reform, in 2017, several Republican senators expressed concern to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson about a Soros-backed program in Macedonia, Just The News reported.

In a missive, the senators claimed that a local affiliate called Foundation Open Society-Macedonia received USAID support through the Open Society Foundation to promote a "progressive agenda."

Such USAID funding joins other controversial funding cited by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who revealed that the agency approved $15,000,000 in funds for condoms sent to Afghanistan and $3,000,000 earmarked for an initiative pushing "being LGBTQ in the Caribbean."

Other highly criticized million-dollar expenditures included $1,500,000 for diversity measures in Serbia, $32,000 to support the publication of a transgender comic book in Peru and $70,000 for a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) musical in Ireland.

However, these cases pale in comparison to more outrageous allegations, such as that of the Syrian national who was charged by the Department of Justice in 2024 for diverting more than $9,000,000 in USAID-paid humanitarian aid to an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group in Iraq.

According to the DOJ, Mahmoud Al Hafyan, leader of a Syrian non-governmental organization with 160 employees, received $122,000,000 between January 2015 and November 2018 from USAID to distribute food kits for Syrian refugees fleeing conflict zones.

But, according to the indictment, during the execution of the contract, Al Hafyan and his accomplices diverted millions of dollars worth of food kits to the black market, funneling them to Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria classified as a terrorist organization by the United States.