Jeremy Bigwood & Eva Golinger: the shady duo
By Aleksander Boyd
London 25.03.05 | Twenty days ago, on March 5, I published an article about Eva Golinger's false claims that her Venezuela Solidarity Committee was a registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization [1]. Since that day peculiar things have been happening to Golinger's website venezuelafoia.info. Firstly the registrant of the website was, according to WHOIS, Jeremy Bigwood:
That information has been changed in the registry, which now shows Eva Golinger as the registrant. Secondly the following claim has been removed from the home page:
This site is funded by the Venezuela Solidarity Committee/National Venezuela Solidarity Network ("VSC"), a 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to providing accurate information about social and political developments in Venezuela. The VSC is funded entirely by private donations. For more information please contact: [email protected], or make your tax-exempt contribution through Paypal, or snailmail to keep this site running and to support VSC's other projects.
However, even today, it can be seen in one of the sub pages [2] (no rush Eva I have already saved a screenshot) [3]. Thirdly the donations button and corresponding page have disappeared from every file but anticipating Golinger's moves I copied it as well [4].
This whole affair reminds of the time when I exposed the relationship between the Center for Economic and Police Research and the Venezuela Information Office [5] and it leads me to suspect that indeed both Eva Golinger and Jeremy Bigwood have something to hide. The IRS has got no records of a Venezuela Solidarity Committee and to have claimed publicly, for over a year now, that her organization had a tax status not granted by the IRS in order to lure the public to make tax-exempt donations and contributions is nothing but misrepresentation; as it was the case when Golinger provided legal counsel to the VIO back in 2003 without having proper legal credentials. To that effect Golinger clarify the issue in message addressed to me (26.06.2004) arguing "I have been working in the legal field, specializing in immigration for more than a decade. I well had my credentials by the time I did 'legal work' for the VIO and prior to obtaining my New York Bar, any such legal work falling under New York practice regulations was done with a supervising attorney" (sic). Fair enough, although she was not registered in the BAR of her native New York -at the time of accepting payments for legal work- Golinger said she had credentials; one must assume akin to her profession in the immigration field in which she had been involved "for more than a decade" (sic). In light of those comments a Vcrisis collaborator sent an email to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which returned the following reply:
Subject: RE: Immigration Attorney Eva GolingerDate: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:22:31 -0500
From: "Diane Kolbe"
The above email was reinforced with this:
Subject: RE: Immigration Attorney Eva Golinger Of course it could well be the case that registration with AILA is not compulsory, however Golinger's own mother, an immigration attorney, is registered with the AILA [6]. Quite dodgy if my opinion is of any value... The most vocal spin doctor of coupster Hugo Chavez in the USA is a person who keeps misrepresenting and lying about her profession, credentials, tax-status and connections to the Venezuelan regime; nothing but prevarications and distortions should be expected from Eva Golinger.
Date: 29/03/2005 19:20
From: "Diane Kolbe"
Addendum on 07.04.05
Few days after this article was originally published Eva Golinger removed from her website [http://evagolinger.com] the claim that she was a "Firm Member, American Immigration Lawyers Association" [7] and her mother, Elizabeth Calderon, also took off references to "Attorney Golinger" from http://calderonlaw.com. [8]
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