Singham's niece helped design Mamdani's bus policy. His money built the nonprofits that put Mamdani in office. His organizations have zero FARA charges after 3+ years of congressional letters. This is not a left-right story. It's an enforcement story.
Neville Roy Singham sold his software company, Thoughtworks, for $785 million in 2017. He moved to Shanghai. He began funding American activist organizations. Between 2017 and 2022, he and his wife, Jodie Evans, co-founder of Code Pink, routed more than $20 million to U.S. nonprofits through shell companies and donor-advised funds. The money flowed to The People's Forum, BreakThrough News, and more than a dozen other groups. Those groups organized protests. Some of those protests turned violent.
None of this is in dispute. The People's Forum itself admitted on X in December 2021 that it received Singham's money.
What is in dispute is whether any of it violates federal law. And the answer to that question depends entirely on whether federal agencies decide to look.
They have not.
The Congressional Record
In July 2024, then-Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Lindsey Graham wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to investigate Singham-linked organizations for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, 22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq. Rubio wrote that it appeared organizations tied to Singham "have been receiving direction from the CCP." The Biden DOJ did not respond substantively.
In April 2024, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith sent a letter to the IRS requesting examination of tax-exempt groups tied to Singham. The IRS cited 26 U.S.C. § 6103, which restricts disclosure of taxpayer information, and declined to confirm whether any investigation was underway.
In June 2025, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer wrote directly to Singham and to Attorney General Pam Bondi, demanding records and requesting a DOJ briefing on investigative steps taken. In September 2025, Comer and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent requesting a formal sanctions evaluation. The House Oversight Committee then voted to subpoena Singham. He is in Shanghai. The subpoena cannot compel his testimony.
As of March 2026, no FARA charges have been filed. No indictments. No asset freezes. The organizations retain their 501(c)(3) status.
That is the enforcement record. It is worth stating plainly.
The New York Connection
The story entered a new phase when Jewish Insider reported this week that Singham's family members are operating inside the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and are shaping the agenda of Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The mechanism is not complicated. Alicia Singham Goodwin, Singham's niece, has served as political director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice since June 2023. The group endorsed Mamdani in the mayoral race. In January 2025, JFREJ launched the "Jews for Zohran" campaign. Goodwin and Mamdani were arrested together at a protest outside Senator Schumer's Brooklyn home in October 2023.
Her parents are also embedded in NYC-DSA. Daniel Goodwin served as CFO and general counsel of Thoughtworks, Singham's company, creating a direct business link. He and his wife, Shanti Singham, donated $4,200 to Mamdani's campaign and affiliated super PAC. Shanti Singham chairs a department at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
One week after Mamdani's January 2026 swearing-in, Goodwin led a DSA call with state legislators focused on building a pressure campaign to advance the mayor's tax proposals through Albany. Jewish Insider obtained a recording. On it, Goodwin says: "We need to understand how Albany works in order to know how to push the players in Albany to get what we want."
Mamdani himself credited Goodwin with originating one of his signature policy proposals. Speaking at a JFREJ event last September, he said: "The idea of making buses fast and free was not my idea. It was an idea I had given to me in a meeting with another New Yorker who was passionate about transit, Alicia." The statement was posted on JFREJ's Instagram account.
The Structural Question
The New York Post editorial board frames this as Beijing setting the agenda for the American left. That framing elides the more verifiable and analytically durable question: what institutional decisions enabled this?
Start with FARA. The statute requires individuals acting on behalf of foreign principals to register with the DOJ and disclose their activities. Singham has not registered. His organizations have not registered. The House Oversight Committee's letter to AG Bondi cited DOJ's 2022 indictment of a Russian legislator and two associates for similar conduct as precedent for the kind of prosecution that FARA can support.
The difference is jurisdictional. Singham is in Shanghai. He is a U.S. citizen. The extradition path is complex. His companies and nonprofits, however, are in the United States. The People's Forum is a New York 501(c)(3). BreakThrough News is registered here. Their leadership is here. FARA registration requirements do not require the foreign principal to be present. They require the domestic agent to register.
No one has been asked to do that.
Next, examine the IRS. Tax-exempt status under 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3) requires organizations to operate for their stated charitable purpose. Chairman Smith wrote in October 2025 that the groups had "failed to operate for their tax-exempt purpose." The IRS has not publicly confirmed any examination of Singham-linked nonprofits. The law's disclosure restrictions make it difficult to verify even the absence of action.
The result is a network that organizes protests, shapes municipal policy, and operates at the intersection of foreign finance and domestic politics, all while retaining the full benefits of U.S. tax law.
The Accountability Gap
Congress has written letters. Lots of them. Rubio to Garland. Banks to Bondi. Grassley to Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. Comer to Bessent. Smith to the IRS. The paper trail runs from 2023 through the present day.
What the paper trail does not include is a single indictment, a single FARA registration demand, a single revocation of tax-exempt status, or a single asset freeze.
Singham's Shanghai residency functions as practical immunity. His family members operate in New York with full civic participation. His money arrived years ago. The organizations it built are now embedded in the political infrastructure of the largest city in the United States.
The enforcement question is not why Congress wrote the letters. It is why the letters were all that happened.
The Singham network is a legal question dressed up as a political story. If the DOJ and IRS are investigating, they are not saying so. If they are not, they should explain why.
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AI Usage: This article was drafted with the assistance of AI tools for research aggregation and structural drafting. All factual claims were independently verified against primary sources prior to publication. The analysis and editorial judgments are the author's own.
Liability: This article reports on documented congressional proceedings, official government letters, and reporting by named journalists. All allegations regarding potential FARA violations and CCP ties reflect the stated positions of U.S. House and Senate committees, not independent legal findings. No subject of this article has been charged with or convicted of any crime. Singham, Evans, Goodwin, and The People's Forum have denied acting on behalf of any foreign government.