NYC Minister and Charity Head to Repay Church $1.2-Million

A New York City clergyman whose use of millions of dollars raised for 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina victims triggered a state investigation has agreed to pay $1.2-million in restitution to his church to settle the inquiry, writes the Associated Press.

The Rev. Carl Keyes and his wife, the Rev. Donna Keyes, jointly led the Glad Tidings Tabernacle in Manhattan. Their financial dealings were the subject of a series of AP reports in 2011 and ’12 that triggered the state inquiry. The $1.2-million repayment involves church funds authorities said the couple used to buy an 18th-century farmhouse in rural New Jersey.

Mr. Keyes’s nonprofit groups, Urban Life Ministries and Aid for the World, raised $4.8-million in 9/11 and other disaster appeals. He and Ms. Keyes allegedly used funds from the church and the charities on extensive travel, on a luxury car, and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in personal debts. The settlement signed Wednesday permanently bars the ministers and Mark Costantin, Glad Tidings’ former executive director, from exercising fiduciary control of any New York nonprofit or religious corporation.