Have you ever heard of the Berger Action Fund? You’re to be forgiven if you haven’t, even if you follow American politics fairly closely because they don’t seem to generate many big headlines in the news. But the group is very real and they channel vast sums of money to political campaigns and policy debates, almost exclusively to the benefit of Democrats. But the original source of the cash is what makes the Berger Action Fund potentially problematic. Almost all of it comes from a man named Hansjörg Wyss. That raises questions because Wyss is a Swiss billionaire who is a foreign national, making it illegal for him to donate money to political candidates or committees. So instead of donating it directly, he funnels the money through the Berger Action Fund which then distributes it without revealing the name of the donor. And we’re not talking about chump change here. In 2021 he coughed up $72 million, making him one of the largest Democratic megadonors.

The Berger Action Fund is a nondescript name for a group with a rather specific purpose: steering the wealth of Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire, into the world of American politics and policy.

As a foreign national, Wyss is prohibited from donating to candidates or political committees. But his influence is still broadly felt through millions of dollars routed through a network of nonprofit groups that invest heavily in the Democratic ecosystem. Such groups don’t have to disclose the source of their funding — or many details about how they spend it.

Newly available tax documents show that his giving through the Berger Action Fund, which describes itself as advocating for “solutions to some of our world’s biggest problems,” swelled in 2021 to $72 million, cementing Wyss’ status as a Democratic-aligned megadonor.

As InfluenceWatch points out, until 2016 the name of the organization was “The Wyss Action Fund.” (I suppose that was a bit too obvious, so they changed it.) The fund was the subject of a 2021 FEC complaint stating that the group improperly claimed its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status while failing to file reports with the FEC regarding the group’s political activities.

Considering how fired up the Democrats always get about “dark money” and exposing the names of anyone who ever donated a dollar to a Republican cause, they certainly don’t seem to have a problem taking Wyss’ money by the bushel load. In 2018 they reported total revenues of more than $228 million and nearly all of their donations went to Democratic causes.

The same groups that accepted the money are on record paying for advertisements promoting Joe Biden’s agenda and multiple Democratic candidates during the runup to the last midterm elections. One firm ran ads for Maggie Hassan. Numerous other examples exist.

So what protections are in place to monitor the flow of cash in this fashion? There basically aren’t any. When it comes to these supposed nonprofit groups, we’re expected to simply “take them at their word.”

“The whole system is currently structured on this premise that we can take these nonprofit group at their word. The reality is there is really no effective oversight to make sure money from a foreign national doesn’t wind up in electoral politics,” said Saurav Ghosh, a director of the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington-based nonpartisan watchdog group.

Wyss’s own sister, Heidi Wyss, published a book about him in 2014. In it, she flatly states that the most important thing in her brother’s mind was being able to create influence using his wealth. She wrote, “Thus, behind the scenes, a Swiss plays an important part in American politics.”

When do you suppose we’ll hear anything from the FEC about this? Honestly, I won’t be holding my breath. Anyone willing to dole out that kind of cash to politicians generally remains a subject of zero interest in Washington.