Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

The feds raided the legendary Friars Club in Manhattan this week amid controversy over the finances of its charitable foundation, sources told The Post on Tuesday.

A squad of postal inspectors descended on the club’s Midtown town house and hauled away “computers and boxes of files” on Monday, sources said.

The US Postal Inspection Service — which investigates crimes including mail fraud and money laundering — conducted the raid in conjunction with Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara, sources said.

A dozen or more inspectors spent the entire day combing through the Friars Club offices, using large carts to tote away the evidence, sources said.

The probe follows a report last year that revealed how the nonprofit Friars National Association Foundation Inc. spent nearly $1.6 million producing a 2015 “Lincoln Awards” charity concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. The event cost considerably more than the club’s ribald “roasts” of comedians or even its 2015 gala honoring Robert De Niro, Showbiz411 blogger Roger Friedman reported in October.

In addition, the foundation paid $374,058 to MBM Entertainment, whose founder, Michael Matuza, was listed as a producer of the Lincoln Awards, along with Friars Club executive director Michael Gyure. Meanwhile, the foundation only gave out $198,200 in charitable grants during its 2014 fiscal year, during which the Lincoln Awards concert was held, IRS records show.

Gristedes owner and former mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, a member of the foundation’s board of directors, said the feds were tipped off by one of about 20 Friars who met this past summer at the law office of Fred Klein, whose Web site identifies him as the club’s treasurer.

Catsimatidis, who said there was “bad stuff” going on at the club, wouldn’t identify the tipster.

The Friars Club also has been roiled recently by dissent over its secretary, or “scribe,” Bruce Charet, who in May was slapped with a sex-harassment suit by fired receptionist Rehanna Almestica. Three club members were suspended last year, with two — comedian Stewie Stone and insurance agent Martin P. Klein — saying their banishments followed run-ins with Charet.

The third, comedy writer Carol Scibelli, said she was suspended and booted off several committees for “asking too many questions about finances” during a June 15 “house meeting.”

“As members, we didn’t have any transparency with the finances of the club,” she said. “We got a lot of answers that didn’t make any sense.”

The club’s lawyer, Howard Weiss, declined to comment, while Matuza and Gyure didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton