New York State Office of the Attorney General

The New York State Office of the Attorney General appears in the investigation of how money raised for AIDS research through an amfAR charity auction was transferred to investors in Harvey Weinstein’s Finding Neverland production. Its role was that of an external public authority examining the transactions: the book records that the office was investigating and later communicated concerns to the charity, but does not report a final finding by the office that the transactions were unlawful.

The amfAR transaction

Megan Twohey spent two weeks tracing what happened to $600,000 raised at the 2015 auction. The funds had instead reached the account of investors in the Finding Neverland production through a series of complicated transactions. Internal amfAR records showed serious unease: the chief financial officer wrote that nothing about the deal felt right, while legal experts told Twohey that the arrangement might amount to fraud. These were concerns under investigation, not a reported legal conclusion.

The New York State Office of the Attorney General was investigating the transaction by the time Twohey interviewed Weinstein at The New York Times. Weinstein’s representatives sought to keep the discussion narrowly focused on the financial deal, and Twohey’s reporting framed the disputed transfer as a test of how much influence Weinstein could exert over an institution. The office’s investigation provided an independent regulatory dimension to that scrutiny.

Public intervention and limits

After the amfAR story was published, the office wrote to the charity identifying concerns, including whether the transactions had resulted in benefits to private interests. It also told amfAR to strengthen its corporate governance. The letter thus placed the matter in terms of both the destination of the funds and the charity’s oversight practices.

The account distinguishes this state-level intervention from the separate federal criminal inquiry opened in Manhattan after publication. Federal investigators made no public comment on the status of their examination in the period described. The New York State Office of the Attorney General’s documented actions were its investigation and its letter to amfAR; the book does not specify a final outcome or describe any enforcement action by the office.