A former official at a State Department-funded global health nonprofit founded by former Secretary of State John Kerry’s daughter Vanessa is facing a criminal charge that he violated federal conflict of interest law by lobbying former colleagues in government.
Federal prosecutors have charged longtime anti-AIDS activist Warren “Buck” Buckingham – former director of the Peace Corps’ Office of Global Health and HIV – with contacting the Peace Corps in August and September 2015 about a “particular matter” he worked on while he worked at the agency.
Buckingham left the Peace Corps in 2012, shortly after helping to approve a $2 million contract for Seed Global Health, a nonprofit that deploys doctors and nurses to developing countries in Africa.
The criminal conflict-of-interest charge was filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington and made public Monday. The formal charge alleges that Buckingham violated the statute “knowingly and willfully,” which can be a felony that carries a maximum five-year prison sentence. However, the case was filed as a misdemeanor, which carries a maximum of one year in custody.
The court charge does not mention Seed Global Health by name, but the time of Buckingham’s allegedly illegal contacts with the Peace Corps corresponds with that agency’s decision to waive competition rules to issue a contract extension to the charity that brought the total value of the contract to $9.3 million, according to a series of stories the Daily Caller News Foundation published in 2016.
Vanessa Kerry, the younger daughter of John Kerry, is a Harvard Medical School graduate who currently directs the school’s Program in Global Public Policy and Social Change. She serves as the CEO of Seed Global, which she set up in 2012 with the aim of aiding developing countries suffering from acute shortages of doctors and nurses.
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