Ex-New Orleans big: Charity vowed Katrina aid - but never delivered
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By REBECCA ROSENBERG in Dallas and JEREMY OLSHAN in New York________________________
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Posted: 4:25 AM, February 22, 2010
The promises Congressman Gregory Meeks made to the victims of Hurricane Katrina were broken as badly as the levees, a former official in New Orleans told The Post.
The man chosen by the Queens Democrat to identify needy families displaced by the monster storm said the pledged financial assistance never arrived.
"These people came down here, sold a good story and didn't deliver," said Louis Rainey, a former Louisiana Democratic political director who himself lost his home to Katrina.
Meeks' controversial charity, New Yorkers Organized to Assist Hurricane Families, is now under investigation by federal prosecutors.
According to its own filings, NOAH-F delivered just $1,392 of the roughly $31,000 it raised
"We didn't get the funds," Rainey told The Post.
"We never got a dime."
Meeks and state Sen. Malcolm Smith, also a Queens Democrat, established NOAH-F shortly after the storm to help 30 displaced families -
- and made the new charity part of their previously organized New Direction Local Development Corp.
At the time, Meeks told the Times-Ledger, a Queens weekly, "Every dime, every dime, will go to these 30 families."
Rainey was chosen to ensure the assistance went where it was needed most, Meeks said.<p>
"It's important to have Mr. Rainey on the ground because you have people trying to take advantage of the situation," Meeks told the weekly.
Rainey, an unpaid adviser, said he gave Meeks' then-director of communications, Candace Sandy, a list of some of the neediest families.
But Rainey said he was not told what kind of assistance they would get -- money, food, shelter -- or whether the help would be distributed through an agency or directly.<p>
At least some of the people he identified, Rainey said, were contacted directly by the fund.
"A few months later, some of the families called and asked about the money," he said.
"They said that Meeks' representatives told them they were going to send down money. That's the first I heard about any money."<p>
Both Meeks and Smith refused to comment.
Rainey, who permanently relocated to Dallas after Katrina, said, "I'm baffled as to why the families never got that money.
"I want to find out what the hell is going on."
The only donation he recalls Meeks and his representatives making was a truckload of used clothing.
Rainey says he was introduced to Meeks for the first time a month after Katrina.<p>
"I met him at the Congressional Black Caucus conference and thanked him for the 18-wheeler," Rainey said.
"I think he's a nice guy and hope he wouldn't steal from victims of Katrina," he said. "I hope that's not the case, but I'm damned sure going to find out."
When The Post first broke the story of the not-very-charitable charity, Meeks and Smith denied having any direct involvement in the disbursement of funds.<p>
In fact, no one on the board or staff of NOAH-F admitted to knowing what happened to the money.
The charity's treasurer, the Rev. Edwin Reed, earlier said he couldn't remember how donations to the charity were disbursed. "I can't recall any details," he said last month.
Claude Stuart, the fund's administrator, was also clueless.
"I didn't control the money. I don't know why the focus is on me," he said.
That tens of thousands of dollars are unaccounted for "all seems a little shaky," Rainey said.
"It sounds crappy."
jeremy.olshan@nypost.com
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