Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Wheeler got $500,000 in Cibernet sale

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2004 16:12:28 -0500

Wheeler got $500,000 in Cibernet sale
By JEFFREY SILVA
January 30 13:36:00, 2004

WASHINGTON—Thomas Wheeler, until recently the nation’s top mobile-phone
lobbyist and now a major fund-raiser for surging Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry, had his $2 million salary padded in 2002 with a
$500,000 bonus from the $37 million sale of a for-profit subsidiary of
the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
The half-million-dollar bonus went to Wheeler, currently a consultant to
CTIA, at a time when wireless companies were struggling financially.
However, CTIA’s revenue increased to $68 million in 2002—a $30 million
increase from the previous year.

The revelation of the $500,000 bonus, which CTIA confirmed in connection
with the release of its 2002 tax return, comes as corporate and
association executives face increase scrutiny over salaries and
benefits.

After a series in the Washington Post last year, the Senate Finance
Committee began a probe of the Nature Conservancy’s management and
certain financial transactions. Nature Conservancy is a nonprofit.

Wheeler’s $500,000 bonus is nowhere to be found in Form 990, the
Internal Revenue Service document for organizations exempt from income
tax. Rather, the bonus is imbedded in his salary of $2,060,058 for
tax-year 2002, which for CTIA began June 1, 2001, and ended May 31,
2003.

Whether the bonus is proper is unclear, because the law governing 501
(C) (6) organizations like CTIA is far less specific than is the statute
for 501 (C) (3) tax-exempt groups, like Nature Conservancy.

An IRS spokesman said the agency cannot address specifics of any given
case, but agreed to have nonprofit specialists review this story after
its publication.

“It is a fairly nebulous issue,” said Hugh Webster, a Washington, D.C.,
attorney who specializes in nonprofit association law.
Another expert on nonprofit trade groups, who requested anonymity,
characterized Wheeler’s $500,000 bonus as a fairly deep legal question.

“I’ve never been in such a situation,” said Thomas Kuhn, president of
Edison Electric Institute and chair-elect of the American Society of
Association Executives. “I think it [the multimillion sale of a
for-profit subsidiary by a nonprofit association] happens pretty
infrequently.”

CTIA will not say who conceived of the Wheeler’s Cibernet bonus and
whether the payment was approved by CTIA’s board of directors.

For more on this story see the Monday, Feb. 2 edition of RCR Wireless
News.

http://rcrnews.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?newsId=16725

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