Two years ago, New Mexico athletic director Paul Krebs organized a week-long golf trip to Scotland for 23 people. The price tag was officially $8,189 per person, but a handful of people didn’t pay a dime of that. Instead, Krebs used the university’s public funds to pay the way for this “fundraiser.”
As an investigative report by Larry Barker of KRQE earlier this month revealed, Krebs used the university’s public funds to pick up the tabs of a few members of the athletic department, including his own and former basketball coach Craig Neal’s. Those bills totaled over $39,000.
Now Baker has a deeper look in a second report published Monday, and Krebs admitted he actually used closer to $65,000 in public funds because they also paid the tabs of a few businessmen who made the trip as well:
Paul Krebs told President Abdallah it wasn’t just Athletic Department bigwigs who got a free vacation to Scotland. Krebs now admits, UNM quietly picked up the tab for a select group of local businessmen to go on the trip. He admits using $24,000 in university funds to give private individuals a free golfing holiday. The Athletic Director says UNM paid for their trip because they were potential donors to the athletic program.
Add it all up, and the public ended up shelling out $64,949 for a golfing holiday in Scotland.
Once again, how is there no money to pay players when junk like this happens in athletic departments? But the issue here is even more basic than that, as Krebs effectively robbed New Mexico taxpayers under the guise of a fundraiser and then lied about how big the robbery was. According to KRQE, the trip expenses were logged as a basketball tournament.
Normally, a private non-profit organization called the UNM Foundation handles fundraisers. But for whatever reason, that didn’t happen for this trip. The UNM Foundation has not yet reimbursed the university, but the funds were paid back through an anonymous donor:
When asked why the UNM Foundation didn’t pay for the Scotland golf trip, President [Chaouki] Abdallah said, “It would have been the appropriate thing to do. The foundation is the entity that’s charged to try to raise money.”
President Abdallah says the UNM Foundation has not reimbursed the university money that went towards the Scotland trip. The UNM Foundation did not respond to a request for comment.
Abdallah was clearly ashamed of this news, but he also called Krebs an “honorable man.”
[KRQE]
