Congo properties narrowly escape sheriff’s sale in Wilmington

Properties owned by the Congo Legacy Center narrowly escaped an auction, following a months-long feud between the city of Wilmington and Ernest “Sammy” Congo, that culminated in legal action by the city to recover more than $300,000 in back taxes.

Those bills accrued for years after the organization lost its tax-exempt status for not filing tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service. 

But at the wire, Congo paid a portion of those taxes, set up a payment plan and showed the exemption had been reinstated. Congo, a local businessman and the father of Wilmington City Council President Ernest “Trippi” Congo, is now on the hook to pay the city more than $236,000  over two years.

Losing those properties also risked wasting a $475,000 grant he accepted from the Delaware Prescription Opioid Settlement Fund to open an addiction resources center. 

What happened?

When the city filed a lawsuit to foreclose on the properties in October, it targeted two buildings on West 28th Street in Northeast Wilmington.

One of them was the former Delaware College Preparatory Academy, which closed in 2015, as well as the former Christ Our King Church across the street.

City property tax records show the Congo Legacy Center didn’t pay its taxes on those properties starting in 2020. The organization then lost its nonprofit status in 2022 after it failed to file its taxes for three years.

In the years following, that number amassed to more than $700,000 between the city and New Castle County.

The city hinged its argument on the fact that since the Congo Legacy Center was no longer a tax-exempt organization, it needed to pay those taxes. When the news broke, the city said it would pursue any taxes not covered by the exemption, should the organization be reinstated.

A letter shared with Spotlight Delaware, dated five days before the sheriff’s sale, shows the Congo Legacy Center had its tax-exempt status reinstated and backdated to the same date as its revocation.

An IRS fact-sheet shows the agency will backdate reinstatements if an organization has not had its exemption revoked more than one time. Additionally, organizations must show a “reasonable cause” as to why it did not file for three years.

The properties were set to go to a sheriff’s sale on Tuesday morning, but were removed from the list prior to the auction.

According to the city, Congo paid a $50,000 deposit on Tuesday morning and signed a two-year, $236,169 repayment plan.

The first payment is in 2025 for a $100,000 deposit, and in 2026, he will have to make an additional $86,169 payment. As part of the agreement, the city waived $102,000 he otherwise would have owed.

Opioid fund investment

In July 2023, a state commission in charge of $250 million in opioid settlement funds awarded  the Congo Legacy Center $475,000 to turn an old school into an addiction resources center.

When Spotlight Delaware initially broke the story that Congo Legacy Center properties were targeted for a sheriff’s sale, a spokesperson for Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s office, which oversees the opioid fund, said it did not screen the financial health of the building prior to awarding a near half-million-dollar grant.

Once the city filed its legal action against the Congo Legacy Center, the office became increasingly worried about losing the buildings.

“The prospect of potentially losing this property to sheriff’s sale is extremely troubling,” the office said in a statement. “We urge the grantee and the city of Wilmington to come to a resolution.”

At that time, questions had been swirling around the efficacy and oversight of the millions of dollars doled out to state agencies and nonprofits across Delaware.

A Spotlight Delaware investigation into the fund found many of the applications were hastily approved, lacked aggressive oversight and funded questionable outreach campaigns.

The grant to the Congo Legacy Center was the third largest of any grant given out by the commission, and the second largest to a non-state agency.

According to its grant application, obtained by Spotlight Delaware in a FOIA request, the Congo-Tarir Project, as it is known, aimed to create a community-based program on the east side of Wilmington to provide activities that promote self-care, education, health, and wellness.

The plan was to renovate the old school and offer space to different nonprofit organizations by March 1 of this year. But as of this week, the school is still under renovation.

Shawn Dottery, who would run the Congo-Tarir Project, said different support groups meet weekly in the church across the street. Additionally, he said the Congo Legacy Center intends to open the school building soon, and that it intends to offer spaces to different recovery nonprofits.