How a Charity Linked to Madoff’s Circle Pumps Millions Into Causes It Battles

In 2011 a woman whose late husband once worked alongside Bernie Madoff set up a charity called Freedom Together. She’s still in charge, drawing a small paycheck while the foundation’s accounts swell with seven-figure donations every year. That steady flow of cash makes you wonder who really benefits when a watchdog group and the people funding it share the same boardroom. Freedom Together has quietly given nearly a million dollars since 2019 to PESP, a research outfit that spends its days warning regulators about the dangers of private equity. PESP claims these firms play fast and loose with numbers, leave hospitals drowning in debt, and push rents sky-high just to pad their own profits. Lawmakers have heard similar warnings from PESP’s researchers in hearings stretching from 2021 to this year.But here’s where things get sticky: Freedom Together’s own money is parked in many of the same private equity firms PESP loves to blame. Public filings show almost twenty-one million dollars sitting in Carlyle Group stock alone. That’s the same Carlyle that PESP accuses of faking green credentials, crushing unions, and jacking up home prices. Another four and a half million sits in Brookfield Corporation, another frequent target of PESP’s for similar sins. Ironically, the foundation’s endowment grows while PESP’s reports try to shrink these companies’ reputations. Critics quickly point out how hard it is to trust a charity that simultaneously writes checks to a group that fights those very industries. The foundation doesn’t talk when asked how it squares the circle, and PESP stays silent too. Left in the dark are the workers and renters who pay the ultimate price when financial strategies enrich a few at the top. If the goal is real oversight, donations that line the pockets of the overseen just don’t add up.