http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/no-accounting-for-40-million-in-charity-shipped-overseas/2162553
The Order of Malta
The Order of Malta in Guatemala is part of an international organization that began in the 11th century as a religious order of the Catholic church.
Headquartered in Rome and operating in 54 countries, the group says its mission is to protect the faith and serve the poor.
In Guatemala, the Order was headed in the early 1980s by Roberto Alejos Arzu, a major sugar and coffee grower. At the time, Guatemala was ruled by a series of military-backed dictatorships and in the midst of a brutal civil war that left nearly a quarter-million people dead or "disappeared."
In a 1984 Washington Post story, Alejos Arzu said U.S. charitable donations to the Order were distributed through Guatemala's military in a "resettlement" program aimed at defeating leftist insurgents. Members were described as being "well-to-do businessmen, lawyers, doctors or others with such facilities as warehouses, trucks or planes at their disposal."
Today the Order's ambassador in Guatemala, its top-ranking official there, is Max Heurtematte Arias, a businessman who is related by marriage to the powerful Alejos family.
The Order's membership is not publicized and the group, which has tax-exempt status, is not required to file public financial reports.
Customs documents show the group received more than 700 shipments in 2010 and nearly 500 in 2011, mostly from U.S. charities.
Despite the flood of donations, the Order's activities are seldom mentioned in the press.
In a country with more than 3,000 aid organizations, veteran relief workers say it is impossible to keep up with everyone's activities. A half-dozen aid workers contacted by reporters said they had little familiarity with the Order's work and no knowledge of major shipments of medical supplies in 2010.
Carmen Gandarela, who works for a medical charity in Guatemala City, gasped when she was told of the size of the reported shipments organized by Charity Services International.
"Oh my God," said Gandarela, public relations manager for Helps International, "even a tiny fraction of that would have an enormous impact here."
Two likely beneficiaries of donations, the Ministry of Health and Guatemala's two major public hospitals, did not respond to requests for information about gifts from the Order of Malta. But there is little question about the need. Two years ago, the managers of Guatemala's biggest hospital declared a state of emergency because of a major supply shortage.
Gandarela, the Helps International employee, said the situation is no better today.
"Most of the time, they don't even have cotton balls or bandages," she said.
Following the trail
In early December, reporters began their search for the Order of Malta in Guatemala's capital, a city packed with more than 1 million people.
For a month before the visit, the ambassador, through his secretary, had rebuffed calls and emails seeking an interview.
In response to initial questions, Heurtematte sent a copy of the Order's international report, which did not mention activities in Guatemala.
Reporters first tried to find the Order at an address listed on its website.
It led to a run-down, four-story building in a commercial and industrial area.
According to one of the building managers, the Order had moved out five years ago.
Reporters then tried another address provided by one of the Order's secretaries. This one was across town in a business district that includes several embassies. There, on the eighth floor of a high-rise, a large crest for the Order of Malta was emblazoned on the wall outside an office.
Inside, however, reporters found the business office of a water company. A receptionist said the ambassador had his mail dropped off at that location, but did not work there.
Next stop for reporters was a warehouse outside Guatemala City that is also listed on the Order's website.
Forty-five minutes outside the city, a gate blocked the driveway. Signs advertised a sporting goods manufacturer and the Order of Malta.
But a property manager refused to let reporters pass.
Within minutes, Enrique Hegel, the Order's president in Guatemala, began emailing reporters short responses to questions that had been submitted several weeks earlier.
Hegel said the group received "two to three containers" from U.S. charities each month and that the donations are given to people "in need, sick or with low income."
He declined repeated interview requests and did not answer specific questions about who got the donated goods.
Later, reporters emailed the same questions to the Order's international headquarters in Rome. There was no response.
Reporters did reach one man who should have been able to give plenty of details about the $40 million in donated goods.
Roberto Gramajo was in charge of the Order's charitable programs in 2010. His name was on the form letters sent by Charity Services to the U.S. charities, thanking them for their help.
Gramajo left his volunteer position at the Order in late 2011 after a disagreement with his bosses.
He has since formed a new charity, Nuevo Amanecer or New Dawn.
CNN reporters interviewed him in December in a warehouse used by Nuevo Amanecer in Guatemala City. He was surrounded by boxes of medicines donated by U.S. charities. Most of the drugs, however, were expired.
Gramajo would speak only generally about the 2010 shipments, stressing that the Order had retained all the records.
Asked if the donations from 15 charities in a single year could possibly have been worth $40 million — twice what Guatemala got in U.S. aid after a 2005 hurricane — Gramajo simply shrugged.
"Es posible," he said in Spanish.
"I have never given any importance to this topic," Gramajo said through a translator, "because really what I am interested in is to have a way to help people."
CNN reporters Drew Griffin, David Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M. Nunez and Romina Ruiz-Goiriena, and Times researcher Caryn Baird and computer-assisted reporting specialist Connie Humburg contributed to this report. Kendall Taggart can be reached at ktaggart@cironline.org. Kris Hundley can be reached at khundley@tampabay.com or (727) 892-2996.
Their Will Be Done | Mother Jones
www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/.../their-will-be-don...
Mother JonesThe knights, in their latter-day incarnation as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta ...Nobility forms the backbone of the SMOM; more than 40 percent of its 10,000 ..... had been executed by Guatemala's Protestant dictator Efrain Rios Montt.
cia's 'christian' faction; americares, pedophile rings ... - Aangirfan
aangirfan.blogspot.com/2013/05/cias-christian-faction-americares.html
Zionist UN Guatemala-Israeli Ambassador Gert Rosenthal and Maya ...
wolfblitzzer0.blogspot.com/.../zionist-un-ambassador-of-guatemala-and....
Oct 26, 2011 - Apparently with all of Guatemala's or more so Israel's 'Permanent Ambassador' to the U.N.,Gert Rosenthal's,conflict of interest in placing ...
truth never told - YouTube
www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
YouTubeBlackwater 911 (Knight of Malta Eric Prince) - The SMOM Jesuit Crusade on ...... of the Americas Graduate Efraín Ríos Montt, recalling Montt's genocidal actions, ...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1983/07/their-will-be-done
One day in July 1944, as the Second World War raged throughout Europe, General William "Wild Bill" Donovan was ushered into an ornate chamber in Vatican City for an audience with Pope Pius XII. Donovan bowed his head reverently as the pontiff intoned a ceremonial prayer in Latin and decorated him with the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Sylvester, the oldest and most prestigious of papal knighthoods. This award has been given to only 100 other men in history, who "by feat of arms, or writings, or outstanding deeds, have spread the Faith, and have safeguarded and championed the Church."
Although a papal citation of this sort rarely, if ever, states why a person is inducted into the "Golden Mili-tia," there can be no doubt that Donovan earned his knighthood by virtue of the services he rendered to the Catholic hierarchy in World War II, during which he served as chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the wartime predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1941, the year before the OSS was officially constituted, Donovan forged a close alliance with Father Felix Morlion, founder of a European Catholic intelligence service known as Pro Deo. When the Germans overran western Europe, Donovan helped Morlion move his base of operations from Lisbon to New York. From then on, Pro Deo was financed by Donovan, who believed that such an expenditure would result in valuable insight into the secret affairs of the Vatican, then a neutral enclave in the midst of fascist Rome. When the Allies liberated Rome in 1944, Mor-lion re-established his spy network in the Vatican; fromthere he helped the OSS obtain confidential reports provided by apostolic dele-gates in the Far East, which included information about strategic bombing targets in Japan.
Since World War II, the CIA has:
- subsidized a Catholic lay organization that served as the political slugging arm of the pope and the Vatican throughout the Cold War;
- penetrated the American section of one of the wealthiest and most powerful Vatican orders;
- passed money to a large number of priests and bishops -- some of whom became witting agents in CIA covert operations;
- employed undercover operatives to lobby members of the Curia (the Vatican government) and spy on liberal churchmen on the pope's staff who challenged the political assumptions of the United States;
- prepared intelligence briefings that accurately pre-dicted the rise of liberation theology; and
- collaborated with right-wing Catholic groups to coun-ter the actions of progressive clerics in Latin America. - Mother Jones Magazine
Catholic Order of Malta,Guatemala,Mystery Aid,Maya Massacres,
Sovereign Military Order of Malta - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta
Wikipedia
It is positive sign that medical charity in Guatemala City, was enormous as of the size of the reported shipments .
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