Ways & Means Republicans Move to Strip Tax-Exempt Status from Nonprofit with Suspected Terrorism Ties

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08), joined by every Republican member of the Committee, has referred the Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), a U.S.-based nonprofit, to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for investigation and potential revocation of its tax-exempt status. In a letter to IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, the Members cite evidence uncovered during a Committee review of MECA that shows ties to groups linked to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, as well as an astonishing reduction in the transparency of its overseas funding activities.

The letter comes amid an ongoing Ways and Means Committee investigation into widespread foreign-linked funding flowing throughout the U.S. tax-exempt sector. This investigation includes a network of entities associated with Neville Roy Singham, a former U.S. technology mogul now residing in Shanghai with strong connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Chairman Smith and Ways and Means Republicans write:

"MECA has ties to foreign actors that raise concerns, including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the United States designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization in 1997. Furthermore, MECA has received substantial inflows through opaque donor-advised and coalition channels; and adopted reporting practices that mask foreign grantees…"

For more than a decade, MECA repeatedly funded organizations tied to the PFLP. In 2024, MECA also received one of only two grants made by The People's Forum, one of three Singham-linked organizations Chairman Smith subpoenaed in July after they stonewalled the Committee's requests for documents on their foreign-linked funding. That grant links MECA to a network the Committee is investigating for exploiting America's tax-exempt sector to advance CCP influence.

MECA's overseas grants averaged about $1.8 million annually from fiscal years 2018 through 2023. After the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel, that spending surged while disclosures all but disappeared.

The letter continues:

"MECA's return for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2024, reported 49 foreign grant lines totaling $10,690,093. Thirty-six of those 49 entries state the purpose of the grant generically as 'COMMUNITY PROJECTS,' and not a single one of the 49 entries identifies a recipient organization. Then, in its return for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, covering 38 grant entries and $11,461,409 in foreign disbursements, no purpose is stated for any of the foreign grants whatsoever."

Chairman Smith and Ways and Means Republicans are asking the IRS to make the MECA referral a top priority. They also request that any evidence of prohibited transactions or material support to a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization uncovered by the IRS be referred to the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.

Fox News first reported the letter.

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