Atheist Alliance International's "Transparency" is an Illusion

by Martin Boers

People of a certain age will be familiar with the slapstick Warner Brothers cartoon series in which a hapless coyote repeatedly tries and fails to catch a roadrunner. In the above clip, Wile E. Coyote disguises a dangerous cliff at the end of a mountain road using a painted canvas that is intended to deceive The Road Runner into believing that there is no cliff, but rather that the road continues on and can be travelled safely.

If he could speak, Wile E. Coyote would no doubt claim that he is committed to "world-class transparency", and that "integrity comes first", when of course the opposite is true. In this respect, Wile E. Coyote would be an excellent candidate to join the current "board" of Atheist Alliance International (AAI), where he would find colleagues who employ similar deceptive tactics towards their members, their supporters, and the general public.

One of the canvases that the current illegitimate "board" of AAI have painted is represented by their annual accounts, the most recent of which (for 2022) were recently published in their latest Annual Report.

I don't claim to know much about accounting, but I'm led to believe that a basic accounts summary would normally include a Profit and Loss statement - made up of income and expenditure items -  and a Balance Sheet - made up of assets and liabilities.

All the summary accounts published on the AAI website, for the years 2017 to 2022, include income and expenditure items, and assets - but no liabilities. If there are no liabilities listed on the balance sheet, then the clear implication is that AAI had no liabilities at the end of any of those years.

The IRS and the California Attorney General (AG) require annual financial statements to be submitted in a more standard format, and AAI's latest form 990-EZ explicitly states that AAI had zero liabilities on 31 December 2022:


But wait ... the 2022 accounts were first presented to members in AAI's Annual Report on 3 November 2023, the same day that Fotis Frangopoulos signed AAI's return to the AG. The Annual Report includes a Financial Statement which reveals that legally required annual filings (on form number "199") had not been submitted to the California Franchise Tax Board for the past ten years:

"199 forms had never been filed to the California Franchise Tax Board, ever since 2013"

- AAI Annual Report 2022-2023

Incidentally, this is why AAI was suspended by the California Franchise Tax board in 2021, which in turn explains why AAI has been doing business illegally for more than two years, and continues to do business illegally today.

The relevant point for AAI's accounts is that the California Franchise Tax Board imposes penalties on late filings. For example:

"Your business may be subject to a $2,000 penalty per tax year for failure to file missing tax returns within 60 days after receiving a written demand to do so."

- California Franchise Tax Board website

On top of that, AAI lost its tax exempt status in California in 2016, and since then it has been subject to the annual $800 Franchise Tax.

The questions for AAI are:

  • Fotis Frangopoulos obviously knew about the late FTB filings on 3 November 2023. Why are the penalties for those late filings not included as a liability on the 2022 Balance Sheet that was provided to members, and to the IRS, and to the California Attorney General? Even if the outstanding balance was paid to the FTB during 2023, there was still a liability on 31 December 2022 that must be declared in the 2022 accounts.

  • Why does the $800 annual Franchise Tax not appear as a liability on any of AAI's Balance Sheets from 2017 to 2022?
The only explanations for these omissions that I can think of are either gross incompetence, or outright deception. In either case, the illegitimate "board" of AAI continues with the sort of farce that wouldn't be out of place in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Their attempts to hide the precipitous financial cliff behind their misleading "accounts" will lead Atheist Alliance International to the same inevitable end as Wile E. Coyote.

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