CNA Staff, Jun 4, 2020 / 14:06 pm
A federal lawsuit alleges that the Archdiocese of New Orleans, as well as two historically black New Orleans universities, improperly applied for and received millions of dollars in federal funds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The archdiocese has denied wrongdoing and says its staff worked diligently to be good stewards of the federal money received after the disaster.
The hurricane, which hit New Orleans during August 2005, killed at least 1,800 people and devastated much of the city. In the years since Katrina and Rita, which hit the region the month after, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has paid out nearly $20 billion in relief.
A whistleblower employee of the contractor that handled the reconstruction projects, AECOM, filed a federal suit in 2016, which alleges that inflated claims of damage after the hurricane resulted in millions of dollars for projects at Xavier and Dillard universities and for several archdiocesan properties, the Associated Press reported.