Prominent civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton, who has become known as a polarizing figure with a penchant for stirring up crowds after high-profile incidents of alleged racial discrimination, risks having his ascent obscured by cloudy financial past.

The New York Times reported that Sharpton has $4.5 million in state and federal tax liens against him and his businesses. Sharpton has said he is paying those debts down, but at least the state debt has in fact grown in recent years, the Times reported.

Sharpton has been famous in the civil rights arena for a while, and that fame has only risen in recent years with the controversial deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Eric Garner — black individuals who died at the hands of white men. He has his own show on MSNBC, increasing his public exposure.

Even in the wake of financial difficulties, however, Sharpton traveled first class and collected a big paycheck despite the tax liabilities — meanwhile, his nonprofit National Action Network has been sustained for a while by not paying his employees’ payroll taxes, according to the report.

The expose goes on to say that Sharpton and the National Action Network routinely fail to pay for services provided by hotels and travel agencies, and that he has relied on money from friends and sometimes the organization itself to maintain his finances — even going so far as to intermingle the organization’s finances with his own in order to provide cover for his daughters’ private school tuition.

President Barack Obama himself has consulted with Sharpton, who has been invited to the White House several times. His status as an insider could be lucrative for him.

However, as long as Sharpton’s financial house is not in order, his debts could overshadow his rise to fame, according to the Times.