The Tangled Web of Anonymity Behind the Koch Brothers' Funding of Non-Profits
Documents released in recent months show the Kochs have added wrinkles to their network that even experts well versed in tax law and campaign finance say theyve never seen before wrinkles that could make it harder to discern who controls each nonprofit in the web and how it disperses its money.
A review of 2012 tax returns filed by Koch network groups shows that most have been set up as nonprofit trusts rather than not-for-profit corporations, an unusual step that reduces their public reporting requirements.
It sounds complicated and arcane because it is. Some of the nations top nonprofit experts said they could only speculate on the reasons for the networks increasingly elaborate setup.
My guess is that were looking at various forms of disguise to disguise control, to disguise the flow of funds from one entity to another, said Gregory Colvin, a tax lawyer and campaign-finance specialist in San Francisco who reviewed all the documents for ProPublica.
http://www.propublica.org/article/who-controls-koch-political-network-asmi-slah-tohe