Anti-Apartheid Activist's Fraud Sentence Upheld

Jet, May 29, 2000

Allan Boesak, former head of the Geneva-based World Council of Reformed Churches and leading anti-apartheid activist, is comforted by his wife, Elna, at a recent press conference in Cape Town, South Africa, after an appeals court upheld his convictions for stealing money from his charity and aid money donated by pop singer Paul Simon.

Boesak, 53, was sentenced last year to six years in prison for theft and fraud involving $183,500 of foreign donor money channeled into an aid agency he ran for apartheid victims. The five-judge panel reduced Boesak's jail sentence to three years and dismissed one of four fraud convictions, yet it upheld his conviction involving $37,000 from a $96,000 donation by Simon.