WHY BUILD PASADENA ARMENIAN GENOCIDE MEMORIAL WITHOUT CURRENT BOARD AND HOW
Staff Reporter
â~@¢ Wed, Nov 12, 2014
The Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee (PAGMC) led by
interim chairman Bernard Melekian, former Chief of Police of Pasadena,
recently published two press releases: “Statement on Internal Affairs”
(October 23, 2014) and “Judge Rejoins Board of Pasadena Armenian
Genocide Memorial Project” (November 4, 2014). They were in response
to former chairman of PAGMC William Paparian’s press releaseand my
reports on the irregularities at the PAGMC’s board. While its most
recent press release is just an announcement about Retired Federal
Court Judge Dickran Tevrizian rejoining the board, the earlier one,
“Statement on Internal Affairs,” is the board’s official response to
the accusations made in Paparian and my press releases.
The board’s “Statement on Internal Affairs” is far from reflecting
what Melekian had described to me in an email as a ‘thorough internal
review.’ As such, it is more of a primitive display of defense
mechanism in the face of factual accusations, rather than a judicious
point-by-point response to each of them. The first sentence of the
statement is quite eloquent in that respect:
The PAGMC is pleased to announce that the law firm of Geragos and
Geragos has agreed to serve as legal counsel to the committee as
we navigate our way to the construction and completion phase of the
Memorial Project.
The rest of the statement is an act of sweeping the issues raised in
both Paparian and my press releases under the rug. It reads like a
clever legal practitioner’s attempt to cloud the issues and distract
the focus from the real problems. The closest the board members have
come to refuting Paparian’s allegations in their statement is contained
in the following profound postulate: “While the Board cannot control
what the prior chairman says, his saying them does not make them true.”
With regard to the PAGMC’s financial problems indicated in Paparian’s
press release and discussed in greater detail in “Crisis at Pasadena
Armenian Genocide Memorial Committee Continues,” the board members
have contented themselves with writing a couple of sentences that
contain neither facts nor figures. They claim the Community Foundation
of the Verdugos (CFV) and the CPA have assured them that ‘there are
no financial irregularities with respect to funds that have been
collected.’ If, in fact, the board’s claims are true, then it needs
to be borne in mind that neither the Community Foundation of the
Verdugos nor the CPA are independent disinterested parties. These
assertions may have assured a handful of board members but definitely
not the rest of the Armenian community that has been presented with
no compelling documentation that backs their statements.
Particularly, the CPA’s assurances should be taken with a grain of
salt, as they are not entirely devoid of favoritism. John Sadd, the
CPA, was retained by the PAGMC on the recommendation of none other than
the central figure in the financial scandal of the PAGMC, its Treasurer
and Chief Financial Officer, David George Gevorkyan. The latter is a
good friend of John Sadd’s son, Louie Sadd. As the chair of the Audit
Committee of the City of Glendale, Louie Sadd was instrumental in
Gevorkyan’s appointment to the Audit Committee of the City of Glendale.
As a matter of fact, Scott Ochoa, City Manager of Glendale, announced,
on November 4, 2014, that David Gevorkyan had resigned from his
position in the city’s Audit Committee for ‘personal reasons’ in
late September. This was said in response to my inquiry about David
Gevorkyan’s current affiliation with the City of Glendale, in light
of reports about inaccuracies in his application for said position. A
mere coincidence or not, Gevorkyan’s resignation occurred following
a background investigation conducted by the City of Glendale, which
revealed material misrepresentations in documents he had signed and
submitted to the municipality in question.
The PAGMC’s board concludes its “Statement on Internal Affairs” with
exactly what it started with – wielding the Law Offices of Geragos &
Geragos, as if it were a sabre of some sort. Instead of doing its
job of spreading fear, however, the current board’s defense mechanism
has only manifested its members’ insecurity:
We welcome the Law Offices of Geragos of Geragos & Geragos with open
arms to the committee and are confident with the assistance of this
nationally renowned law firm we can continue to promote issues near
and dear to the Armenian community.
The extra ‘Geragos’ may be a typo, but it is, certainly, a vivid
example of Freudian slip. The board may add as many ‘Geragoses’ as
they want, but the quantity, in this instance, is highly unlikely to
translate to quality.
In fact, bringing Mark Geragos, a high profile criminal defense
attorney, to the PAGMC as legal counsel wasn’t a very wise choice
by Melekian and the board he chairs. Ironically, Geragos is in the
middle of a developing scandal regarding unfair distribution of funds
among insured Genocide victims’ heirs. In astatement issued on May 26,
2014, the AXA Settlement Fund Board, established in France, in August
2007, to oversee the distribution of funds among the beneficiaries
in question, accused Mark Geragos and his colleagues of a number of
irregularities, based on abundant evidence. Below are two fragments
from their detailed statement:
Further to the insistence of the Board, Attorney Geragos sent to France
a big account book, concerning the AXA case. The examination of this
only file revealed several irregularities with regard to clauses
mentioned in the agreement of November 2005 (“Settlement Agreement”).
[…] Although it does not come within its remit, the Board observes
that the allocation of 3 million US DOLLARS to the non-profit
organizations, as well as the balance amount after the payment of the
compensations to individuals, was not following the clauses of the
agreement dated November 2005, signed with AXA; this one stipulated
that the aforementioned associations had to be the ones of the Armenian
Community of France. Now, not only the Lawyers did not fully distribute
the sum of 3 million US DOLLARS added to the balance amount, but they
allocated an important part of this compensation to other countries
than France.
How can a person who has been implicated in mishandling the Genocide
victims’ funds be on a board that is meant to honor the same victims’
memory?
In another example of poor judgment, Bernard Melekian has tried to
solve the board’s problems with lights and glitter instead of facts
and figures. The boardannounced on November 4, 2014 that Retired
Federal Court Judge Dikran Tevrizian rejoined the board. The calculated
effect is obvious. The addition of a renowned judge and a high-profile
criminal defense attorney is expected to add legitimacy and convince
the average member of the Armenian community that everything is fine
with the board. “Otherwise a reputable federal judge would never get
involved with it,” Boghos or Bedros will think.
What they probably don’t know is that, unlike Mark Geragos, Judge
Tevrizian is not only aware of the irregularities that have marred
the board’s past, but has made a personal contribution to them.
As mentioned in “Crisis at Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial
Committee Continues,” Judge Tevrizian was the Master of Ceremonies for
the Armenian Genocide Memorial Ground Blessing event that took place on
April 27, 2014. The solemn ritual was tarnished by a violation of the
IRS terms for 501(c)(3) organizations, when Judge Tevrizian introduced
James Hellmold, Assistant Sheriff of Los Angeles County, as a candidate
for the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Moreover, he invited Hellmold to
the stage to give a speech. Judge Tevrizian thus violated the IRS
requirement to provide ‘an equal opportunity to participate to all
political candidates seeking the same office.’ Bob Olmstead, another
candidate for the same position, Los Angeles County Sheriff, was also
present at the ground blessing event. But neither Judge Tevrizian, nor
any of the members of the PAGMC’s board led by Paparian tried to remedy
this clear-cut violation by providing Olmstead an equal opportunity.
Melekian’s bad choice of new members to the board is reminiscent of
an earlier display of poor judgment, when he decided to cooperate
with a Turkish organization, which, as it was later revealed, was
lobbying against the recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
In 2008, Bernard Melekian and his wife became the first and so far the
only Armenians to have benefited from all-expenses-paid trips offered
by the Pacifica Institute. It is a non-profit organization established
by a group of Turkish-Americans in California, in 2003. At that time,
the retired Chief of Police of Pasadena was the incoming Director of
the Community Oriented Policing Services Office in the Department of
Justice. After the trip, Melekian was invited to the 6th annual Dialog
and Friendship Dinner, organized in Los Angeles, CA, on November 12,
2009, by the Pacifica Institute, where he reportedly said that he was
‘very touched by visiting his grandfather’s birthplace in Turkey and
the Institute is going at the right direction.’
What is the ‘direction’ that Melekian readily deemed ‘right’? In
“Armenians Should Counteract Countless Congressional Trips to Turkey,”
Harut Sassounian, publisher of the California Courier, writes that
the Pacifica Institute is among ‘Turkish-American organizations who
have spent millions of dollars to take members of Congress and their
staffs on all-expenses-paid trips to Turkey with the intent of buying
their allegiance.’ Sassounian was referring to investigative journalist
Shane Goldmacher’s findings published in The National Journal.
According to LegiStorm.com, a website that closely monitors
congressional travel and finances, 615 congressional visits were made
to Turkey since 2000 at a cost of $3.5 million, as of January 14, 2014.
The Pacifica Institute has readily acknowledged being affiliated
with the Gulen Movement. Dubbed as a ‘secretive movement,’ the Gulen
Movement is allegedly behind the 2013 corruption scandal in Turkey,
which targeted the ruling Justice and Development Party, resulting in
the arrest of hundreds of civil servants. After Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed revenge on Fethullah Gulen, the latter
fled to the U.S. and now lives in a self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania.
Despite the hostility between Gulen and Erdogan, however, there is
at least one thing where their agendas seamlessly match, and that is
the Armenian Genocide denial campaign.
Faruk Taban, the president of the Turkic American Alliance, the
umbrella group that encompasses a number of U.S.-based Gulenist
organizations, was quoted by BuzzFeed as saying that the Gulen
movement’s involvement in U.S. politics began in 2007, ‘when Turkish
immigrants lobbied to squash an Armenian genocide recognition bill.’
According to him, the major Gulen organizations ‘play a role in
helping people from local communities get involved in DC.’
It is unclear how much of this was known to the incoming Director of
the Community Oriented Policing Services Office in the Department of
Justice, when he accepted the offer of an all-expenses-paid trip to
Turkey. Though the lobbying scandal hit the news a few years later,
there must have been clues for a seasoned high-ranking policeman that
Bernard Melekian is.
The PAGMC’s recent statements have made it apparent that the current
board is unwilling to address the issues mentioned in Paparian and my
press releases. The battle of press releases is becoming a waste of
precious time. Since Geragos is notorious for manipulating the law
to circumvent justice, future attempts to amend the wrongdoings of
the board may well be futile.
There is a simple solution to ensure that the Pasadena Armenian
Genocide Memorial doesn’t get marred by the cancer of corruption and
cover-up that has spread in the PAGMC’s current board. The memorial
should be built by a new committee. And actions should be taken as
soon as possible to achieve that goal.
In a conversation with Edna Karinski, CEO of the CFV, I discovered
that many of the CFV’s clients are not organizations, but rather
groups of people who raise funds for specific projects intended to
benefit the community. Instead of going through the trouble of setting
up a non-profit organization, these groups use the non-profit status
of the CFV to collect tax-deductible contributions and spend them in
accordance with guidelines that regulate the relationship between them
and the CFV. As strange as it may sound, most of the PAGMC’s issues
could have been avoided had it never had a non-profit status at all.
Below is a list of steps to create a new committee:
All donors will be contacted and offered the choice to participate in
the formation of a new committee that will manage the construction
of the memorial and future fundraising; All the members of the
new committee must have no formal ties to any political parties
and candidates and must not be representatives of any religious
organization. This will help prevent the new committee from making the
same mistakes as the current board; The new committee enters into an
agreement with the CFV to pool donations for the construction of the
Pasadena Armenian Genocide Memorial; All donors will be encouraged
to request a refund for their donations made to the PAGMC/CFV and
contribute them to the new committee’s account managed by the CFV;
The new committee petitions the City of Pasadena to transfer control
over the memorial site to it and reissue all the permits related to
the construction.
The new committee enters into an agreement with the existing contractor
and starts the construction of the memorial.
If the construction professionals determine that the memorial
won’t be completed by April 24, 2015, then, upon the engineers’
recommendations, some elements can be temporarily scaled-back to
ensure timely completion of the project and finalized later; As the
construction progresses, the new committee will continue fundraising
and applying for grants.
A memorial stands not only for honoring the memory of the victims of
the Armenian Genocide, but also for upholding truth and justice.
Building a memorial on the foundation of lies and cover-up dishonors
our ancestors and makes our demands for justice from the Turkish
government hypocritical. As the grandson of Shahan Natalie, who
was responsible for the act of retribution against Talaat, Enver,
and Djemal Pashas, the chief perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide,
I feel morally obliged to do what my grandfather would have done in
this situation.
Ara K. Manoogian is a human rights activist; a Fellow of
the Washington-based Policy Forum Armenia (PFA); creator of
; author of the white paper “To Donate Or
Not to Donate”, an in-depth study on the activities of the “Hayastan”
All-Armenian Fund
http://centerarnews.com/why-build-pasadena-armenian-genocide-memorial-without-current-board-and-how-p6941-1.htm
www.thetruthmustbetold.com