UK Political Operative Imran Ahmed Of CCDH Should Be Prosecuted Before He’s Deported: Thacker

Authored by Paul D. Thacker via The DisInformation Chronicle,

A British newspaper reported last week that the Trump White House aims to deport British political operative Imran Ahmed who runs the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a pro-censorship organization Ahmed founded in London several years ago with Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. But before they kick him out of the country, the Department of Justice should indict Imran Ahmed for laws he broke in America, to include lying to Congress and filing materially false statements with the IRS.

Here’s a quick review of Imran Ahmed and the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).

Based on documents provided to me by a whistleblower, I reported with Matt Taibbi that CCDH was seeking to “Kill Musk’s Twitter” and interfere in the 2024 presidential elections by allying with Democrats. Our October 2024 investigation blew up across the internet—my first post on X getting over 40 million views, and BBC Today reporting on the story the following morning.

A Trump campaign official pledged CCDH would be “investigated from all angles.” But since the election, the Trump government has done nothing.

According to documents provided by a CCDH whistleblower, Ahmed now lives in Northeast Washington, D.C. with his American wife. And while The Telegraph reported that the White House wants to revoke Ahmed’s visa, I’m not sure this is possible as I have been told that Ahmed might have an American passport.

Instead, the Department of Justice should indict Ahmed first for lying to Congress in an August 2023 letter about the nature of his funding, and second for lying to the IRS when he applied for nonprofit, tax-exempt status for CCDH in 2021. Third, my CCDH whistleblower told me Ahmed has ranted in staff meetings that he “might go to jail.” While nobody inside CCDH understands why Ahmed is frightened about going to jail, they suspect it involves his shady funding.

I uncovered an American company Ahmed incorporated in Delaware that is likely how he hides some of his finances.

Lying and misleading Congress

Trying to figure out who was funding CCDH Congressman Jim Jordan asked Ahmed to explain if he was receiving government monies. In response, Ahmed, sent an August 2023 letter claiming that “CCDH is entirely funded by private donors.”

That claim is false, and providing false and misleading information to Congress is a crime. The British Telegraph reported last January that Members of Parliament were upset because the government had funded CCDH.

Here’s one paragraph from The Telegraph’s report:

Ben Obese-Jecty, the Conservative MP for Huntingdon, said: “It’s disgraceful that taxpayers’ hard-earned money is being wasted on Left-wing campaign groups, one set up by the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, who are waging war on our free media and trying to shut down X.

Again, Ahmed misled Congressman Jordan in his letter that denied government funding, but the Department of Justice has failed to investigate this misleading claim.

False statements to IRS

“A finding that there is a materially incorrect statement on an application for tax exempt status should hopefully encourage the IRS to take a hard look,” said Dean Zerbe, regarding CCHD’s application to the IRS to get tax exempt status. Zerbe is a tax attorney with consulting firm Alliant, and a former Senate staffer who investigated corruption in the nonprofit industry.

So what’s materially false in CCDH’s submission to the IRS?

CCDH falsely claimed in their 2021 submission to the IRS that CCDH was already operating as a registered charity in the U.K. However, London investigative reporter Paul Holden found that CCDH never registered as a British nonprofit. CCDH likely made the false claim to speed up the IRS process to gain tax-exempt status so they could begin fundraising in the States.

Yet, neither the IRS nor the Department of Justice has investigated CCDH’s materially false claim.

CCDH’s Secret Funding

Imran Ahmed launched the U.S. versions of the Center for Countering Digital Hate in 2021. You can find all the nonprofit’s financial reports called 990s, at ProPublica’s website.

In 2021, for example, CCDH reported taking in $1,471,247 in donations. While nonprofits are not required to report their donors, I discovered that someone donated $1.1 million to CCDH in 2021. But they hid the donor by running the money through a private Schwab Charitable Fund, meaning someone secretly gave Ahmed’s group almost 75% of the donations they raised in their first year.

Hiding the money has always been important to Ahmed, and CCDH’s whistleblower pointed me to another financial stream: a private company in Delaware that Ahmed also owns. Mirroring the name of the nonprofit, Ahmed’s private company is called the “Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc.”

Unlike the CCDH the nonprofit, CCDH Inc. (the private company) is not required to make its finances public. Yet I found that the CCDH nonprofit uses CCDH Inc. to pay the nonprofit’s bills. For example, when CCDH the nonprofit pays its law firm, the invoice is paid by the company, the Center for Countering Digital Hate Inc.

You can find the invoice here that CCDH paid to the law firm Faegre Drinker for help with renting a WeWork space and for help with immigration matters. According to Delaware state records, the CCDH company was incorporated in 2020, and the address on the invoice is 639 Morton Place NE which is a personal residence in DC, with 2 bedrooms.

Note also that the CCDH company has a different address from the CCDH nonprofit, which states in its 990s that it operates from an office building at 1250 Connecticut Avenue, in Northwest DC.

Since Morgan McSweeney and Imran Ahmed created CCDH, they have not only hidden the organization’s finances, but also who they employ. CCDH’s website currently shows only 6 employees. My whistleblower at CCDH sent me an organization chart that shows CCDH had 28 employees in the summer of 2024.

Imran Ahmed tells CCDH’s employees that he hides their names so that they are not retaliated against, but this is nonsense. A more likely explanation is money. CCDH’s nonprofit tax records filed with the IRS report that the nonprofit takes in around $2 million a year in donations. Ahmed is paid about $250,000 and his is the only salary reported to the IRS. None of the other salaries are reported, as required.

Instead, CCDH reports to the IRS that a couple hundred thousand dollars covers all their employee salaries.

Several members of CCDH’s leadership team are also paid six figure salaries. Yet, CCDH has never explained how they pay dozens of staff members with only the money they report to the IRS. The Washington Free Beacon just reported that the database for the George Soros, Open Society Foundations details a $250,000 donation to CCDH for 2024, but where else does the group get its money to censor free speech?

Enough is enough. When will Department of Justice demand answers?

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