Posted by:
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Date: June 20, 2013 09:37PM
Note: This is an expansion of info. I posted earlier this year.
Yesterday, I went through several pages of online financial records filed by the LD$ Church with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) in order to maintain its status as a registered charity. LD$ Inc. registered 484 "Qualified Donees", 483 of which are Canadian wards and branches. Notably, there is one non-Cdn. organization on the list: Brigham Young University.
The link is
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/ebci/haip/srch/t3010form22gifts-eng.action?b=119223758RR0001&e=2010-12-31&n=THE+CHURCH+OF+JESUS+CHRIST+OF+LATTER-DAY+SAINTS+IN+CANADA&r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cra-arc.gc.ca%3A80%2Febci%2Fhaip%2Fsrch%2Ft3010form22-eng.action%3Fb%3D119223758RR0001%26amp%3Be%3D2010-12-31%26amp%3Bn%3DTHE%2BCHURCH%2BOF%2BJESUS%2BCHRIST%2BOF%2BLATTER-DAY%2BSAINTS%2BIN%2BCANADA%26amp%3Br%3I called the CRA to inquire about why a US-headquartered church with a university that has no campuses in Canada would be allowed to register its post-secondary education institution as a "Qualified donee." I was told that regulations allow it - period.
The sum of the listed "Total amount of gifts" for the 484 "Qualified Donees" is $115,126,701. How much tithing and other "offerings" from Canadian Latter-day Saints did the LD$ Church funnel to BYU? According to the filed data, $102,900,000 (89.38%).
LD$ 'Profits' or other priesthood leaders certainly did not inform Mormons in Canada that the lion's share of their donated monies would be used not to build chapels or temples or support the missionary program or for genealogy activities, but to pay the church's BYU bills. Why utilize the cash from unsuspecting Cdn. members that way? The likely answer is so that the LD$ Church would not have to use ~$103M from its American sources to pay its university operating expenses.
What would be advantage of that arrangement? Millions of dollars could be funneled from LD$ Inc.'s U.S. sources to its wealth management company, Ensign Peak Advisors (EPA). For what purpose? Profitably trading financial instruments.
Eleven months ago, Bloomberg Businessweek did an in-depth piece about the LD$ Church's global money-making empire. The "Holy Holdings" graphic on p. 2 of the online report shows EPA as one of the companies structured under the "Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of LDS" (the image is online at
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p2).
The related Businessweek online slideshow says: "Ensign Peak Advisors is an investment fund of the Mormon Church. According to profiles on LinkedIn, managers at Ensign Peak specialize in international equities, cash management, fixed income, quantitative investment, and emerging markets. One of Ensign Peak’s vice presidents in 2006 [Laurence Stay] told the Deseret News that 'billions of dollars change hands every day.'” (Ref.
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2012-07-11/the-mormon-global-business-empire#slide11)
Think about it, lurking Latter-day Saints: "billions of dollars" of financial instruments were traded "every day" in 2006 ALONE to make the ultra-rich Mormon Church even richer. Disconcertingly, in October of that year the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reported that in excess of 852 million people worldwide did not have enough to eat (details are online at
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1020-01.htm).
What was the LD$ Church doing with its immense wealth while people went hungry and many starved to death? Developing its multi-billion-dollar City Creek Center commercial real estate project in SLC. Of course, Mormon priesthood leaders continued to tell members that they needed to clean chapels, while church HQ reduced the meager monthly sum provided to missionaries to pay for their food and basic personal care expenses.
What kind of financial instruments has EPA traded to generate wealth for the Mormon Church? In the least, stocks, bonds and credit derivatives, according to info. from the following sources:
1.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-10/how-the-mormons-make-money#p22.
http://www.imno.org/articles.asp?qid=123&sid=183.
http://www.isda.org/bigbangprot/bbpdf/EnsignPeakAdvisorsInc.pdfBear in mind that credit derivatives were at the heart of the U.S. subprime credit boom-and-bust "bubble." It began in the latter 1990s, mushroomed from about 1998 to early 2007, and then imploded starting six years ago, wiping out trillions of dollars of global wealth and destroying an estimated 31 million jobs worldwide during the so-called "Great Recession."
Four years ago, KSL reported that Mark Willes, president and CEO of the LD$ Church's Deseret Management Corp., said: "We're announcing publicly, for the first time, that for the last several years we've had impairments of $600 million [at church-owned Beneficial Life]." The "big hit in the financial portfolio" was, according to Willes, "completely tied to the meltdown in the financial markets, which we face just like everybody else does." (Ref.
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=6836506)
So much for LD$ 'Profits' having the "gift of prophecy"!
Returning to the Businessweek article, page 2 says: "According to U.S. law, religions have no obligation to open their books to the public, and the LDS Church officially stopped reporting any finances in the early 1960s. In 1997 an investigation by Time [Magazine] used cross-religious comparisons and internal information to estimate the church’s total value at $30 billion. The magazine also produced an estimate that $5 billion worth of tithing flows into the church annually, and that it owned at least $6 billion in stocks and bonds. The Mormon Church at the time said the estimates were grossly exaggerated, but a recent investigation by Reuters in collaboration with [Univ. of Tampa] sociology professor [Ryan] Cragun estimates that the LDS Church is likely worth $40 billion today and collects up to $8 billion in tithing each year."
The CRA info. reveals that the LD$ Church has played a money shell-game with "tithes and offerings" from duped and sacrificing Cdn. members. No doubt, the same has happened in many other countries. For generations, Latter-day Saints have been kept in the dark by Mormonism's senior priesthood leadership about how their donated funds have been used. Thankfully, regulations in Canada and some other nations (but not the U.S.) have forced the "true" corporation of Je$u$ Chri$t to partially pull back its financial curtain.