amfAR

amfAR is an AIDS research charity whose high-profile fundraising included a Cannes gala auction. Its relationship with Harvey Weinstein, who had helped the organization stage the event, became a source of scrutiny when $600,000 raised at a 2015 auction flowed to investors in his Broadway production Finding Neverland. The resulting inquiry and reporting made the charity a central setting in an investigation of financial transparency, institutional influence, and the responsibilities of its leadership.

Mission and public profile

The auction was part of amfAR’s fundraising work, and its Cannes events were associated with the star-studded, red-carpet presentation that Jodi Kantor had studied while reporting on Weinstein. Weinstein had maintained a close relationship with the charity for years and helped it organize the gala. That public association gave him an established presence within an institution whose purpose was to raise money for AIDS research.

The transaction at issue connected that charitable fundraising to Weinstein’s theatrical business. Finding Neverland was struggling to get off the ground, and money raised for amfAR in 2015 was, through a series of transactions, transferred to the production’s investors. The funds were not disclosed to the charity in a way that its leaders considered adequate. Some amfAR leaders felt misled and feared that something illegal might have occurred. The concern was not simply that a charity-related sum had moved: it was that money raised in the organization’s name had come to benefit private investors in a production linked to a powerful figure with a longstanding relationship to the institution.

The transaction and the internal inquiry

amfAR’s board hired lawyer Tom Ajamie to examine what had happened. The assignment placed him in the middle of a difficult review: he later told Megan Twohey that Weinstein obstructed his inquiry at every turn. Ajamie also said that David Boies had used nondisclosure agreements to restrict members of the board. Together, these measures complicated the board’s effort to obtain an independent account of the transaction and discuss what it had learned.

As Twohey pursued the story, she assembled records and interviews that traced the movement of the $600,000 and the concerns it had generated between 2015 and 2017. Internal documents showed that some staff and board members had raised objections. In one email, the chief financial officer expressed serious reservations about the deal. Legal experts told Twohey that the arrangement might amount to fraud; the evidence available to the reporters also raised the possibility that more than half a million dollars intended for AIDS research had instead reimbursed Weinstein’s investors. Those were reported concerns and questions, not a final legal determination.

Ajamie’s review also reached beyond the financial transaction. The more he asked about Weinstein, the more he heard allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. He raised those concerns with Lisa Bloom in October 2016, before she began working for Weinstein. In the course of the amfAR inquiry, then, a review of charitable funds became one route through which information about Weinstein’s conduct circulated. The financial matter did not itself establish those allegations, but it broadened the reporting context in which the charity’s dealings with him were examined.

Reporting and pressure

Twohey persisted with the financial investigation for two weeks, even as Jodi and the editors worried that it might divert attention from the larger reporting project on Weinstein’s treatment of women. She had confirmed that the New York State Office of the Attorney General was investigating and obtained internal records showing grave concerns among people at amfAR. To Twohey, the transaction could show how Weinstein exerted influence over an institution; the charity’s relationship with him and the board’s difficulty pursuing an outside review formed part of that account.

On September 19, 2017, Weinstein came to The New York Times Building to challenge Twohey and push back against the article. The meeting had been approved on the record and limited to the financial transaction, not the allegations of mistreatment. Twohey’s reporting had also involved interviews with amfAR board members, Weinstein, Boies, and others with knowledge of the funds, alongside emails and other documents. The resulting article, published on September 23, brought the transaction and the questions surrounding it into public view. Five days later, company employees were still discussing the report, and Irwin Reiter told Kantor that they were watching someone hold their boss to account.

Regulatory response and significance

The New York State Office of the Attorney General later wrote to amfAR, saying the transactions raised concerns, including whether they had resulted in benefits to private interests, and instructing the charity to strengthen its corporate governance. Federal investigators in Manhattan also opened a criminal inquiry into the transactions. Weinstein continued to deny wrongdoing, and the book reports that investigators had made no public comment about the status of their examination. The evidence presented does not establish a final legal outcome.

The episode therefore left two distinct records: an unresolved public inquiry into where the auction proceeds went, and a documented institutional response to questions about oversight. amfAR’s case illustrates how a charity’s fundraising relationships, internal decision-making, and access to information can become inseparable when a powerful associate’s business interests intersect with donated funds. The reporting did not reduce the matter to a single transfer; it followed the route of the money, the concerns raised within the organization, the constraints placed on its board, and the subsequent calls for stronger governance.