The US State Department’s oversight body is investigating the now-defunct Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its use of millions of dollars in emergency aid funding, the Financial Times reported, citing three people familiar with the inquiry. The State Department’s Office of Inspector General is examining a $30 million grant announced last June to the organization, which was backed by the United States and Israel to distribute aid in Gaza. Reuters could not immediately independently verify the report.
Who Controls the Money
The inquiry goes straight to the machinery of power: who got the money, what it bought, and who decided how it moved. The investigation is to determine “what money was spent and how,” including “which bucket it came from, and how it was doled out,” one of the sources told the Financial Times. The report said GHF’s aid pricing and other services purchased with funds received from the State Department are also under scrutiny. The Office of Inspector General told the Financial Times that it “does not comment on investigative matters and neither confirms nor denies the existence of an investigation,” but noted a February audit of the department’s “efforts to provide food assistance to the West Bank and Gaza.”
The grant itself came from the State Department’s humanitarian assistance funds, according to one US official, while the department was also urging other countries to provide additional funding for the aid group. That is the familiar arrangement: public money routed through institutions, then managed behind closed doors by the same apparatus that claims to be helping.
Who Pays at the Bottom
Two people familiar with GHF’s operations said the organization used State Department funding to purchase food and logistics, while another person said GHF had paid “significantly more for food than the US had previously paid in the region.” A GHF spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said the organization was not aware of the OIG inquiry and that food had been purchased “at reasonable prices.” The spokesperson said internal GHF documents noted that transport costs had been particularly high due to the nature of the ongoing war. The spokesperson also said GHF was “in the process of developing a plan to reduce transport costs when [Israel’s government asked it to suspend operations] in October because of the US-brokered ceasefire,” declining to further comment on the organization’s finances.
That is the hierarchy in plain view: emergency aid money at the top, logistics and pricing decisions in the middle, and people in Gaza left to live with the consequences of a system that can suspend operations, audit itself, and call it relief.
What They Call Accountability
The State Department had drawn from its humanitarian assistance funds for the $30 million grant given to GHF, according to one US official, while urging other countries to provide additional funding for the aid group. In July 2025, several senators asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to explain why such a large grant was given, what other rules were waived and what GHF’s other funding sources were. “There should be no American taxpayer dollars contributing to this scheme,” the senators wrote in a letter to Rubio.
The senators’ letter shows the usual reformist loop: demands for explanation, questions about waivers, and concern over funding sources, all inside the same state framework that approved the grant in the first place. The Office of Inspector General’s February audit and the current inquiry now sit alongside those questions, but the facts on the ground remain the same: a now-defunct aid group, a $30 million grant, and a trail of public money moving through institutions that answer upward, not outward.
The Financial Times reported the investigation based on three people familiar with the inquiry, while Reuters said it could not immediately independently verify the report. The GHF spokesperson said the organization was not aware of the OIG inquiry and declined to further comment on its finances.