TABLOID BRO ‘BILK’
Enquirer heirs fight over nonprofit
Three siblings related to National Enquirer tabloid founder Generoso Pope Jr. are fighting over control of their wealthy family’s New York foundation — with two claiming their brother looted millions from the nonprofit, new court papers show.
The siblings are the great-grandchildren of Generoso Pope — a construction tycoon whose materials helped build the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center — and grandchildren of the brother of Pope Jr., a media mogul who established the cheeky scandal and celebrity-gossip tab.
Their great-grandfather started the Generoso Pope Foundation in Westchester in 1947 to fund educational, health, cultural, human services and civic institutions — which was passed through the family over the years.
Decades later, greatgrandchildren Marie Thérèse Pope, 56, and Ted Pope, 58, charge that their brother David Anthony Pope convinced his grandmother to make him CEO and president of the foundation around 2006, according to the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit from Friday.
The 54-year-old Bronxville brother then began cementing his control over of the organization “with the goal of using the foundations’ funds for his own selfinterested and improper purposes,” the filing asserts.
Marie Thérèse said David “has destroyed the foundation and its ability to achieve my greatgrandfather’s vision.”
The suit also said David pushed brother Ted out of the foundation in 2007 and removed his sister as an officer by 2010, and when David assumed power, the foundation had $32 million, but by 2019 only $4 million was left.
Marie-Thérèse said her brother “has grossly mismanaged and looted the foundation’s funds for his own benefit and self-aggrandizement. He has taken tens of millions of dollars. I am doing all in my power to stop him.”
David began taking a much higher salary than previous presidents did — his salary was $98,000 in 2005 and climbed to $198,193 by 2017, the court papers allege.
David gave his wife and two sons jobs in the foundation, which paid them “hundreds of thousands of dollars” for “little to no work,” the documents say.
David did not return a request for comment on Friday.