Editor’s note: The original Breitbart.com story has been removed and the Jason Mattera videos have now been moved to “private” on YouTube.  There is widespread discussion on Twitter that the person Mattera interviewed in the videos may have been a Bono impersonator.

 

U2 singer Bono is known for his antipoverty activism, which includes calls on most world governments to spend more on foreign aid. Yet when it comes to the finances of Bono’s own company, he’s apparently a bit more of a Scrooge. Moreover, he’s loath to admit it, as an interview with author Jason Mattera caught on tape showed. You can watch the video and read the transcript of some select excerpts provided by Breitbart.com below:

Mattera: By dodging taxes on royalties are you raiding the poverty programs you purport to champion?

Bono: No.

Mattera: No? Don’t you want governments to be generous with other people’s money and not yours?

Bono: I don’t have control over that…

Mattera: How do you not have control over that? It’s your company. Are you not in charge of your own company?

Bono: It’s not my company.

Mattera: You have no say in what U2 does?

Bono: Not particularly.

Mattera: You don’t? You don’t have a say in what U2 does?

Bono: No.

Mattera: You’re the front man of your band, which has made you hundreds of millions of dollars … you have no idea why it moved from Ireland to Holland?

Bono: I don’t have that answer.

Mattera: It wasn’t take advantage of a much lower tax rate?

Bono: I don’t have that answer.

Mattera: You are seriously going to say that you don’t have that answer?

Bono: I don’t have that answer.

Mattera has been referred to as “DC’s Bad Boy Reporter,” and criticized in some quarters for his tactics. However, few have disputed his ability to get embarrassing excerpts out of those he interviews. This series of videos certainly does nothing to dispel that perception.