Oddball billionaire Patrick Carroll won’t be donating $1.5 million to Unicef after all, thank you very much.
Last summer we published a string of stories about the mysterious real estate mogul careening about Europe, getting in fist fights with other One Percenters while splashing cash with gay abandon on art and charity auctions.
So we weren’t entirely surprised to learn that Carroll had thought better of the lavish largesse.
Page Six this week learned that he’s dubbed Unicef, one of the world’s most recognizable aid organizations, “fraudulent” and exercised his right to take-backsies.
Carroll went to the starry LuisaViaRoma x UNICEF gala in July — also attended by Spike Lee, Jared Leto, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ansel Elgort, and Vogue UK boss Edward Enninful — and made the winning bids on a vintage car and a “’Top Gun’ experience” that included a ride in a fighter jet and fancy food, wine and accommodations in Burgundy, France.
But it appears that the purchase hasn’t gone though.
Carroll told Page Six, “I sent the full amount of the donation through my bank and was quite surprised when it flagged the recipient as a fraudulent organization. That is because, as I later found out, the donation was technically not to Unicef but rather to the [Capri event’s] ‘membership committee’ and to the event promoters, which spent lavishly on the benefit itself. I was also told the donation was tax deductible, and shockingly that wound up not being the case.”
He added, “At that point, I made the decision that my philanthropic dollars would be better spent elsewhere.”
His attorney Duncan Levin Patrick told us, “Patrick Carroll is a philanthropist and he will continue to donate to organizations when money actually reaches those who are in need.”
Various Unicef reps didn’t get back to us.