Two weeks after their bank accounts were frozen amid a swirl of investigations by the Trump administrationpoplar365, nonprofit organizations that were supposed to receive $20 billion to help curb climate change are still unable to withdraw money, raising concerns about their ability to pay staff.
In that agreement, the 2015 Paris accord, they promised to act and acknowledged a bare truth: Climate change threatens all of us, and we owe it to each other to slow it down. Countries agreed to nudge each other to raise their climate ambitions every few years, and the industrialized nations of the world — which had prospered from the burning of coal, oil and gas — said they would help the rest of the world prosper without burning down the planet.
The accounts were frozen by Citibank, which holds the money, after Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator,fef777 cassino suggested there was potential fraud and the F.B.I. and Department of Justice launched investigations. Those inquiries went forward despite the determination by a top federal prosecutor that there was not enough evidence to open a grand jury criminal probe.
“Citi was designated as the financial agent of the United States pursuant to the authority of the U.S. Treasury Department and has been working with the federal government in its efforts to address government officials’ concerns regarding this federal grant program,” the bank said in a statement. “Our role as financial agent does not involve any discretion over which organizations receive grant funds. Citi will of course comply with any binding instructions from the federal government.”
Mr. Zeldin has criticized the policy and the structure of the program that was created by Congress and run by the Biden administration. He called for the money to be returned to the federal government, but has presented no evidence that a crime has been committed. This week, he asked for a third, concurrent investigation by his agency’s acting inspector general.
Climate United, which received almost $7 billion under the program to distribute to other organizations, said Tuesday that it is struggling to make payroll, and individual project developers cannot withdraw the money they were promised.
own777“These relationships take many months to build and are in jeopardy if funding freezes continue,” said Brooke Durham, a Climate United spokeswoman.
We are having trouble retrieving the article content.
Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.poplar365