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Champagne Joshi Profile picture
@JoshWalkos
Feb 5 • 21 tweets • 9 min read • Read on X
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🧵 The truth about USAID and their number one contractor Chemonics International Image
Chemonics International is one of the biggest U.S. government contractors in “global development” raking in billions from USAID.

But behind the glossy reports are fraud allegations, mismanagement, and ties to shady dealings. Image
What is Chemonics?

A Washington, D.C.-based development firm operating in 100+ countries. Its focus? Health, agriculture, governance, economic development. But its real business? Winning USAID contracts. In 2019 alone, it received $1.5 billion in USAID funding aka taxpayer’s money.
chemonics.comImage
It gets virtually all of its money primarily from USAID, but also the UK’s Foreign Office and the World Bank.

Interesting bedfellows right? Image
One of its biggest contracts was $9.5 billion of taxpayer money for a Global Health Supply Chain project (2016–2023). The catch? That project became a disaster.

“We had procurement analysts who were just making it up,” one former employee said. “We had trash data, and then we had people who didn’t understand how humanitarian aid cargo actually worked. It was a disaster waiting to happen.”

devex.com/news/too-big-t…Image
A Brief History
•Founded in 1975 as a subsidiary of Erly Industries.
•Became employee-owned in 2011 via an ESOP.
•In the ‘90s, helped privatize Ukraine’s agriculture sector.
•Took on post-conflict reconstruction in Afghanistan & Haiti—both riddled with cost overruns, subpar results and scandals.
Chemonics is 100% employee-owned, though its international staff weren’t included until recently. The transition was facilitated by billionaire Eijk Van Otterloo, co-founder of investment firm GMO. Image
Here is a sampling of the Current Board at Chenomics that has suddenly disappeared from their website.🤔


Susanna Mudge (Chair) – Former CEO, expanded Latin American operations. chemonics.com/board-of-direc…Image
Jamey Butcher (CEO/President) – Oversees global operations. Image
Archie Jones – Harvard Business School professor, private equity guy. Image
Gunjan Bhow – Ex-Disney & Amazon exec. Image
Phyllis Caldwell - Impact Investor & Former banker Image
A billion-dollar development contractor wouldn’t be complete without scandals.

1. Fraudulent Billing (2024)

Settled a $3.1 million case over reckless oversight.
•A subcontractor, Zenith Carex, overbilled USAID in Nigeria.
•Classic “we had no idea” defense from Chemonics.

justice.gov/opa/pr/chemoni…Image
2. Global Health Supply Chain Failures ($9.5B Project)

•Massive delays almost ran out HIV drugs in multiple countries.
•2021 audit: “poorly implemented controls.”
•A senior director lived like a king far beyond their salary.

thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2023-1…Image
3. Discrimination & Labor Violations

- 2016: Paid $482,000 for discrimination against Black job applicants.

- 2022: Age discrimination lawsuit—ex-director alleged systematic bias.

news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-re…Image
4. Data Breach (2023)

•263,136 employees & applicants had personal data exposed.

•The company sat on it for nearly a year before disclosure.

fedscoop.com/a-major-usaid-…Image
5. Taliban Bribery Allegations (2020)

•Named in a lawsuit for allegedly paying protection money to the Taliban.
•A common practice among U.S. contractors in Afghanistan.

legalreader.com/lawsuit-says-u…Image
6. Xinjiang Forced Labor Ties (2024)

•Reportedly sourced products from Chinese entities linked to Uyghur labor camps.
•The company, of course, denied knowledge.

“The report by the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, or C4ADS, says that even two U.S. government agencies — the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Agency for International Development via its contractor Chemonics International — have not cut ties with East Turkistan (Xinjiang)-linked drug suppliers.”

turkistanpress.com/en/page/drugma…Image
Chemonics is part of a group known as “Beltway Bandits”, firms that keep U.S. foreign aid money cycling through D.C. contractors instead of actually helping local economies.

newsweek.com/beltway-bandit…Image
The story of USAID and Chemonics is not just about waste or mismanagement, it’s about a systemic racket that funnels billions of taxpayer dollars into private pockets under the guise of “foreign aid.” Haiti’s post-earthquake reconstruction laid bare the entire playbook of disaster capitalism:

•USAID awarded Chemonics multi-billion-dollar contracts, despite a track record of failures, delays, and outright fraud.
•Less than 1% of USAID funds went to Haitian-led organizations, while Chemonics and other Beltway contractors kept the lion’s share.
•From rigged elections to botched aid distribution, USAID and its contractors shaped Haiti’s reconstruction in a way that benefited foreign elites while leaving Haitians in deeper crisis.

The Clintons have played a major role in this racket worldwide.

And this isn’t just Haiti. From Afghanistan to Ukraine, the USAID-Chemonics machine operates the same way, exploiting crises to justify endless contracts while delivering little to nothing. The U.S. foreign aid system isn’t about “helping”, it’s about maintaining control, dependency, and corporate profit.

The next time a disaster strikes and some USG agencies is tasked with swooping in with billions, ask where that money is really going—because history tells us it’s not going to the people who need it most.

Your tax dollars at work.
Hey while you’re here please give me a follow so you can catch future threads I’ve made like these .👇🏻

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More from @JoshWalkos

Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Apr 18
🧵Autism rates have exploded, becoming a massive financial enterprise and while framed as support, the reality involves billions in profits. Let’s explore who benefits and how. Image
In 2000, CDC data showed 1 in 150 children diagnosed with autism. By 2023, it’s 1 in 36—an unprecedented 317% increase. Improved diagnostics alone can’t explain this growth.

Source: cdc.gov/autism/data-re…Image
Autism-related costs in the U.S. reached a staggering $223 billion annually in 2020, projected to be $589 billion by 2030. Expenses include healthcare, special education, therapies, and productivity losses.

Source: mindd.org/research/alarm…Image
Read 16 tweets
Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Apr 12
Mega 🧵

Trusting “the experts” is the intellectual version of Stockholm syndrome.

They lied. They failed. They censored. They gaslit. And still, millions defend them like hostages too afraid to look at the door.

This thread is for the escapees. Image
Iraq War & Weapons of Mass Destruction (2003)

Claim: Saddam Hussein had WMDs and was a threat to global security.

Reality: No WMDs were found. The intel was cooked. Millions died based on a lie.

Senate Intelligence Report, 2004
intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/…Image
Financial Crisis of 2008

Claim: The economy was stable. Subprime was “contained.”

Reality: Entire system nearly collapsed. Economists, Federal Reserve officials, and ratings agencies missed or downplayed the looming disaster.

archive.is/DVAFyImage
Read 59 tweets
Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Apr 8
The GATT, WTO, and NAFTA were not just bad policies, they were acts of economic treason. They sit at the core of nearly everything that has hollowed out America from the inside.

GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), forged in the post-WWII glow of globalism, was marketed as a peacekeeping tool through trade. In practice, it laid the foundation for mass offshoring and the evisceration of American industry.

It later mutated into the WTO (World Trade Organization) in 1995, a supranational bureaucracy that imposed a so-called “rules-based order” favoring multinational corporations while undermining U.S. sovereignty. It gave unelected global panels the power to overrule American laws, all in the name of “free trade.”Image
Then came NAFTA, Bill Clinton’s crown jewel of betrayal in 1993. Touted as a job-creating miracle, it instead created a wasteland. The “giant sucking sound” Ross Perot warned of wasn’t hyperbole, it was prophecy. Entire manufacturing towns were gutted, wages collapsed, and the American middle class began its long descent into serfdom.

These weren’t just trade deals, they were coordinated demolitions. They prioritized Wall Street, global banks, and corporate monopolies over workers, families, and the very idea of national self-determination.

And both parties were in on it. Republicans and Democrats alike, greased by lobbyists and think tanks, rammed these treaties through with no serious public debate. No referendum. No real choice.

The final nail in the coffin came in May 2000 when the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4444, a bill to grant China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR).

If you look at the graph you will see a steep decline in U.S. manufacturing jobs that begins around June 2000, a full year and a half before China formally joined the WTO. That wasn’t an accident, it was the market reacting to what was already a done deal behind closed doors.

U.S. corporations began ramping up plans to offshore production, banking on the fact that China’s entry into the WTO was now inevitable. Executives started shifting supply chains in mid-2000, leading to immediate job loss in American factories, especially in textiles, electronics, and consumer goods. This all coincided with capital investment flooding into China from U.S. firms eager to exploit dirt-cheap labor and totalitarian efficiency. An exploit they did.

The job destruction that followed wasn’t just predictable it was planned, applauded, and executed by a bipartisan alliance of globalist technocrats and corporate raiders.Image
The fallout? A destroyed industrial base. The rise of the fentanyl-fueled opioid genocide in the jobless void. Open borders to replace laid-off Americans with cheap labor and serve up a permanent underclass to the same corporations that offshored their jobs in the first place.

What came through those borders? Drugs. Human trafficking. Criminal syndicates. A tidal wave of social destabilization all traceable to the same traitorous policies that sold out the American people decades ago.

So as the talking heads lie, spin, and deflect, just remember how we got here, and what we’re actually fighting for.

Until these policies and the traitors who engineered them are torn out root and branch, the American republic will keep bleeding out. Our destiny, betrayed by men without principles.Image
Read 4 tweets
Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Mar 30
THREAD: Peter Marks—the FDA’s top vaxx czar just resigned. His letter? A sanctimonious screed praising Operation Warp Speed, mRNA shots, and the holy church of “settled science.”

Let’s break it down using his own words. Image
Marks was Director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Again this man oversaw the entire vaccine portfolio, including the warp-speed rollout of experimental mRNA shots.

He’s now “retiring.” But not before writing a bizarre love letter to Pharma. Image
Image
Marks opens by calling the FDA staff the “most devoted to protecting and promoting public health.”

This is the same FDA that tried to seal Pfizer’s trial data for 75 years.

Forced by court order to release it.

reuters.com/legal/governme…Image
Read 26 tweets
Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Feb 20
Open The Books just published a shocking report that shows how much government spending has gotten out of control.

Here are a few examples that compare head count to spending.

We are being fleeced.

USAID head count since 2000 has grown 218%. But spending has grown 467.7%. Image
Image
The National Institutes of Health headcount has grown by 21.5% since the year 2000. But over the same period, spending has skyrocketed 301%. Image
Image
The Department of Education headcounts actually decreased since 2000, by 13.9%. But spending rose 749%! Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Champagne Joshi Profile picture
Feb 9
🧵 Another contractor who’ve made their money from taxpayers that’s little known to the public is International Relief and Development, now Blumont.

By 2011 over 80% of its $500 million annual budget was sourced from USAID, becoming one of their largest “nonprofit” contractors. Image
However, beneath its philanthropic facade lies a history of financial mismanagement and exorbitant executive compensation.

A WaPo investigation found that between 2008 and 21012 Dr. Arthur B. Keys Jr., IRD’s founder and CEO, along with his wife, Jasna Basaric-Keys, who served as COO, reportedly pocketed a combined $4.4 million in salary and bonuses.

Definitely no conflicts of interest there.🙄

Source: archive.is/757ZbImage
In 2015, revelations emerged that IRD had billed the U.S. government a staggering $1.1 million for staff parties and retreats at exclusive resorts.

Source: archive.is/s3kDgImage
Read 12 tweets

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