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- <text id=94TT1341>
- <title>
- Oct. 03, 1994: Scandals:Charitable Seductions
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994
- Oct. 03, 1994 Blinksmanship
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- SCANDALS, Page 51
- Charitable Seductions
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> Did the former head of United Way funnel money to a mistress?
- </p>
- <p> William Aramony was 59 when he and Lori Villasor began their
- affair. She was not quite 18. Back then, in December 1986, Villasor
- was still new to Alexandria, Virginia, up from Florida, just
- out of high school, not quite knowing what to do with her life.
- Villasor, Aramony would later say, "comes from a poverty background.
- I don't want her to slip back into it." And, according to a
- federal grand jury, he went out of his way to make certain she
- didn't. Last week details emerged about how Aramony, the former
- president of United Way of America, allegedly supported his
- then teenage mistress with funds siphoned through a spin-off
- company from the $3 billion charity he headed. Aramony's Sept.
- 13 indictment described how he sent her flowers, provided her
- with limousine rides, flew her to vacations, gave her use of
- a New York City condo, made out checks to her for "consulting,"
- presented her with a fax machine--all with money from the
- United Way.
- </p>
- <p> Aramony denied the charges, as he had when suspicions were raised
- as early as 1990, after employees at U.W.A. headquarters in
- Alexandria began gossiping about the trips Aramony would take
- with Villasor. Anonymous letters on U.W.A. stationery reached
- members of the charity's executive committee, a group led by
- Edward Brennan, chairman of Sears, Roebuck & Co. By 1991 inquiries
- by the Washington Post may have prompted the U.W.A. board to
- deepen its investigation and to discover how Aramony's personal
- expenses were passed off as company expenditures.
- </p>
- <p> Among those mentioned in the indictment was Rina Duncan, an
- aide to Aramony. The indictment states that Aramony and Duncan
- had a "personal relationship" and that Villasor said she would
- leave Aramony unless Duncan took a job elsewhere. Aramony found
- work for Duncan at Partnership Umbrella, the U.W.A. spin-off
- company that he would use to fund his affair with Villasor.
- As for Villasor, the exhaustive account of her relationship
- with Aramony suggests that she too cooperated with the grand
- jury. Her affair with Aramony ended two years ago.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
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