Eskimos ask IRS to investigate group opposed to ANWR drilling

by The Associated Press

Eskimos living in the only village inside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service against a group opposed to drilling for oil in the Alaska refuge.

The Native village of Kaktovik — home to about 260 Inupiat Eskimos — and Kaktovik Inupiat Corp. alleged the Washington, D.C.-based Alaska Wilderness League has illegally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lobbying efforts, including television advertising, fund-raisers and telephone campaigns to block efforts to open the 19.6 million-acre refuge to drilling.

“AWL spends nearly all of its time and expends most of its resources on both direct lobbying and grass-roots lobbying in clear violation of the requirement that AWL be operated exclusively for educational purposes,'' the complaint says.

The complaint filed Oct. 23 asks that if the IRS finds the law has been violated, Alaska Wilderness League's tax-exempt status be revoked and it pay penalties for taxes it should have paid since it was founded in 1993.

The Alaska Wilderness League said it is complying fully with restrictions placed on it as a tax-exempt nonprofit charitable corporation. Arctic campaign director Adam Kolton said nonprofits are not allowed to spend more than 20 percent of revenues on lobbying efforts, and of that, only 5 percent can be spent on efforts geared toward the general public.