Listen.
Dozens of West African citizens of
Seattle took to the street last week
to protest the ousting of their leader,
the founder of the West African
Community Council, also known as Whack,
over allegations of missing money.
The leaders name is Isa Injai.
Wag is a standout nonprofit that
served more than 4000 W African
immigrants over the last decade.
Everybody running through the coconut tree.
They provide preschool educational services.
Food, rent assistance, transportation
and free immigration legal services.
There's nothing like it in the northwest.
We need a community bank right now.
But in the last year,
legal infighting by board members led a
King County judge to appoint an outsider,
a legal custodian known as a receiver,
to take over the nonprofits operation.
The founder and executive director Isa Injai,
a beloved community leader who donated
his family home to the charity, was out.
Yeah, he donated.
He gave up his job.
This was his house that he
bought for his family. He don't.
He gave it up for the West
African community to gain.
Isa Injai is a well respected 44
year old immigrant from Senegal.
He serves on the King County
immigrant and Refugee Commission.
He speaks 3 languages,
has a Masters in public administration
from the University of Washington and
he's forged strong government alliances
to lift up West African immigrants.
Here he is with then Mayor
Jenny Durkin in 2020.
One Durkin met with children and toured
the facility to announce full city
funding for wax preschool program.
Losing him like we would lose
everything we built because, you know,
we all built this together with him.
Yeah, and I don't want this
issue to tarnish that. Good work.
Seattle attorney Dan Bugby is
wax court appointed receiver,
the issue he uncovered last month.
Isa and Jai had a secret,
a secret whack bank account
that didn't show up on any of
the nonprofits official books.
With hundreds of thousands of dollars
passing through it every few months.
And what was your reaction
when you uncovered that? Shock
groups such as Boeing Group Health,
United Way of King County and the
Seattle Foundation were making large
donations into the Whack account,
money meant to help people in need.
But bank records show transfers
and purchases that don't appear to
have anything to do with supporting
immigrant children and families.
There's no doubt in my mind that this
was not being done transparently.
It wasn't being reported to
government agencies and certainly
wasn't turned over to me,
which was the. Courts order
in the financial records we found
donated money paid for items such as
two airplane tickets and products
at the South Center Apple Store,
$3000 went to Lexus of Bellevue,
but the vast majority was transferred
directly from the nonprofits bank
account to Enjoyes personal one.
It started out small,
a few 100 bucks at a time,
but grew to regular deposits
of 50,000 and $100,000.
Nearly 2.5 million total did. Your
client's steal from the West
African Community Council,
Mr. Anjali maintains. Strongly,
emphatically maintains that not
a single cent is missing and that
every single cent went to the
community and not to himself.
Jeff White is and day's attorney
and spoke on his behalf.
He says his client knows he
didn't follow the rules,
but that his heart was in the right place.
That the money eventually made
it to undocumented immigrants
and members of the community who
don't trust government supported
programs so could have helped
somebody else is what you're saying.
Or it could have been.
It could have been something
akin to money laundering.
I don't see any of the markers or the
red flags that I personally would
associate with misappropriation.
Living high off the hog,
stealing money from children
and using it on yourself.
That's not what I see here.
Back at the Community
Council services continue.
We need our Community now,
and the temporary leaders want to get
past the scandal and gain the trust
of the Community to keep it that way.
We have to keep it going.
Doctor Jonathan Vudu is wax interim director.
He says he's working hard to
keep Isaac's original vision
alive and to their donors,
he has a message
it is an organization
that should not go down.
Please don't us out there.
Do not let work down.
We are ready to keep it going
and the support is there.
Where do you wanna end the receivership?
Protesting members of the West African
community are sticking by Angie side and
are waiting for him to come back. Most
of it is not true.
If not, all of it is not true.
So let's go to the bottom
of it and see what happens.
We're going to win this.
And that's exactly what a lot
of people are doing right now,
trying to get to the bottom of this
and trying to get to the truth.
Not only is the receiver
looking into all of this,
but we do know that the state
Attorney General's office as we speak,
is investigating the whack,
and we're going to see
what happens on their end.