still failed to provide adequate financial assistance to elderly and sick Holocaust survivors who live in abject poverty in the twilight of their lives. An organization which boasts that it currently holds in trust $900 million in assets, yet fails to rectify such a condition, must be held accountable for one of the greatest scandals in contemporary Jewish life." The priorities of the organization have also been criticized. Among the critics is the Claims Conference own treasurer, Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor, who told The Jewish Chronicle: "Survivors are suffering. Our only priority should be the survivors, and everything else should be secondary. We are spending money for thousands of projects, but the health of the survivors can't wait. They are dying daily." [...] "I'm not saying that these are bad programs, but they can wait – or else they should be the responsibility of the world Jewish community, not the Claims Conference. In a 2006 investigative report, it was claimed the organization, while having $1.7 billion in its accounts, finances welfare assistance for only 9,000 survivors while "tens of millions of dollars each year" are spent on management expenses. Amidst this mounting criticism, the office of Germany's independent federal auditor announced it was considering an investigation of the Claims Conference in June 2008. In 2023 Claims Conference launched an international investigation into Holocaust denialism. They pushed the claim a large percentage of Dutch youth dismissed the Holocaust. However, investigators and reporters noticed the research was done shoddily and the results seemed made-up. Money stolen from Claims Conference On November 9, 2010, the US Attorney's Office announced an indictment against 11 employees of the Claims Conference and several other individuals for fraud and embezzlement of over $42 million from the Claims Conference. The Claims Conference management alerted the Federal Bureau of Investigation as soon as it discovered the fraud in 2009, and continues to cooperate with the FBI. On October 19, 2012, The Forward reported that the fraud had grown to $57 million. On May 20, 2011, The Melbourne Herald Sun reported that one investigation of a suspected fraudulent claim centered on Australian Alex Kurzem's application for reparations. Kurzem, whose life story is featured in a book entitled The Mascot, discussed his support for Nazi war criminal Kārlis Lobe but also claimed to be a victim of Nazi persecution. In 2013, an 8-year jail sentence was handed down to Art.