59 million dollar Bikini Islander fund

by **kingstonlake** 2023-06-05, 13:36

It gone.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/05/bikini-atoll-nuclear-fund-interior-department

Former staff have lashed the US Department of the Interior for failing to predict that a 2017 decision to lift oversight from a $59m trust fund for Pacific Islanders displaced by American nuclear testing would lead to the fund’s exhaustion through mismanagement and alleged fraud.

In 2017, Douglas Domenech, who Donald Trump had appointed as assistant interior secretary, announced that the department would hand over control of the fund, which by then held $59m, to “restore trust and ensure that sovereignty means something”.

Earlier this month, the New York Times reported that the fund had been whittled down to about $100,000, largely through extravagant spending by Jibas on projects including land development in Hawaii, new ships and planes, and an apartment complex in the Marshall Islands

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