Wall Street did what it does best. When Congress passed the CARES Act with funding to bailout small businesses and industries in need because of shutdowns caused by the pandemic, Wall Street executives looked for loopholes and exploited exceptions to milk the program for as much as they could -- allowing private equity-backed companies to access public funding that should have gone to genuinely small and independent businesses instead.

• A large amount of funding -- more than $224 million -- went to private equity-backed fast-food and other restaurant chains that didn’t need saving. They actually prospered during the pandemic while thousands of independent restaurants closed forever.
  

• Some of the small business money went to private equity-backed chains that were already financially compromised, including Art Van Furniture and Chuck E. Cheese -- both of which collapsed under private equity-imposed debt.
  

• Meanwhile, some of the private equity-backed companies that received support fired employees during the pandemic, instead of retaining workers as Congress intended when providing the relief.  

In fact, our report found that private equity-backed companies secured $1.2 billion in pandemic relief that was specifically intended for small businesses. That was relief money intended to keep small restaurants, gyms, and other mom and pop retailers a float and keep their workers on staff.

It’s too late to keep Wall Street from taking the money, but it’s not too late for the Small Business Administration to require them to pay it back.

Join us in calling on the SBA to hold Wall Street accountable for misusing Covid relief money and force businesses to pay it back by adding your name now.