Big corporations have lots of subsidiaries, and I don’t think it’s super-rare to acquire what amounts to a dummy/shell corporation for non-fraudulent reasons. I’d call it a yellow flag if the grantee knew North Dimension had been “defunct phone stores.” Except for perhaps recipients of the largest grants, I don’t think that flag is bad enough that the grantee couldn’t have reasonably relied on others’ due diligence—both in the investing world and in EA.
But more to the point: the only thing the grantee knew was that the money came from an entity with the generic name of North Dimension. I don’t think that information alone put them on notice that they needed to dig or discuss with others.
To be clear, it seems that far too little due diligence was done as a whole, but I don’t think the original poster should think less of most individual grantees for that.
Big corporations have lots of subsidiaries, and I don’t think it’s super-rare to acquire what amounts to a dummy/shell corporation for non-fraudulent reasons. I’d call it a yellow flag if the grantee knew North Dimension had been “defunct phone stores.” Except for perhaps recipients of the largest grants, I don’t think that flag is bad enough that the grantee couldn’t have reasonably relied on others’ due diligence—both in the investing world and in EA.
But more to the point: the only thing the grantee knew was that the money came from an entity with the generic name of North Dimension. I don’t think that information alone put them on notice that they needed to dig or discuss with others.
To be clear, it seems that far too little due diligence was done as a whole, but I don’t think the original poster should think less of most individual grantees for that.