Just the facts...

Don't buy the advertising,
don't get swept up by the spin.

In 1989, a freelance investigative journalist working with ROLLING STONE magazine was invited to attend a press conference in Paris, France.

Held in one of the most sumptuous restaurants in Paris, the journalists were feted with champagne, caviar and foie gras. They were given an overview of how the rock star STING and a couple of associates were going to stop the destruction of the Amazon rainforest by starting a new charitable foundation.

However, this journalist knew more than a little about the Amazon issue and something about the press conference just didn't ring true. Not the least of which was the extravagant spending on a press conference purporting to be for a charity. So an independent investigation was begun for ROLLING STONE magazine.

What became quite evident upon investigating the hard evidence was that the Rainforest Foundation was a scam, the entire basis for its creation a lie, the goal being to defraud the public and the stated objectives of the foundation merely a pretext. Amazingly, the truth was revealed by the very participants in the fraud, namely Sting (Gordon Sumner), his common-law wife Trudie Styler, and a Belgian photographer named Jean Pierre Dutilleux.

The allegations of malfeasance were published in the January 1990 Paris edition of ROLLING STONE and distributed throughout the world. Neither Sumner, Styler nor Dutilleux took any legal action because the allegations documented were true. The ROLLING STONE story was used as a blueprint for a WORLD IN ACTION documentary broadcast in England. Sting and his cohorts tried to claim that the show was inaccurate, but the British authorities determined that the allegations were true.

Incredibly, these miscreants refuse to quit, and they continue to press on trying to get the public to donate funds.

There are many wonderful charitable organizations which were created with honest goals and true aims, trying to stop deforestation and protect the indigenous populations. Sadly, The Rainforest Foundation is not one of them.