Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, is cutting millions of dollars in funding for the Vermont-based ice cream chain’s foundation after the latter refused to turn over audit documents about donations to pro-Palestinian groups, Semafor reported.
The foundation trustees “have continued to resist basic oversight,” which “represents a marked departure from the norms of charitable organizations, for whom transparency is typically a bedrock operating principle,” Peter ter Kulve, a Unilever executive, wrote to Ben & Jerry’s executives.
The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation distributed “more than $5 million of Unilever’s money in 2022, mostly to progressive organizations, and has done so ever since the quirky, left-leaning Vermont creamery was acquired by the corporate giant in 2000,” according to the report.
“Since then, Ben & Jerry’s politics have been a headache for its parent, and the tensions between the two have grown more acute as the business community got swept into the culture wars, first pulled to the left in the mid-2010s, then retreating rightward under the second Trump administration,” Semafor added.
Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen has accused the Jewish state of “genocide,” and the ice-cream company said in 2021 that it wouldn’t sell its items in Judea and Samaria.
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