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whistleblower on Church finances


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22 hours ago, helix said:

Further, Ensign is alleged to not have spent any investment on charity in 22 years.

  • The source of the $1B in tithing is a single PowerPoint slide, which doesn't call it tithing, but rather money "granted to [Ensign] on an annual basis" (page 43).
  • It further doesn't state whether some or all of this $1B came from non-profit or for-profit sources.
  • The source for $7B in annual tithing is a second-hand recollection of someone else's guess (page 20).
  • The Washington Post notes no evidence was provided for the claim of $0 spent on charity from Ensign.

It seems that while this post by helix got lots of reps, its points are getting somewhat ignored...especially the above one. 

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15 minutes ago, Analytics said:

When you are in charge of investing a big fund and the church adds to the fund but never takes money out of it, and you hear from your coworkers that the same thing is happening in all of the funds, and you look at the history and see that it's been that way for 22 years, you should have a solid basis to know what is going on...

Has any of that actually been demonstrated instead of just alleged though?  Do the documents demonstrate this or is it based on Nielsen’s say so at this point?

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13 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

1. There is no way to justify this level of wealth hoarding and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ instructs his apostles to go without money to proselyte. He tells a rich man to give all his wealth away to the poor. He teaches to not be concerned with tomorrow as God cares for the lilies of the field.

How does amassing $100 billion in one account, which is 14x the estimated total of a single year of all the tithing ($7 billion) taken in world-wide fit into anything Jesus ever taught?

How do you justify the church's own annual figure on charitable giving ($40 million annually) while hoarding $100 billion?

This is not a rainy day fund. $100 Billion is enough for the entire church to operate in perpetuity on the interest alone even if it never collected another dollar in tithing. Forever.

There is no world in which this priority correlates to the priorities Jesus advocates.

Latter-day revelation from Jesus to our prophets is how it correlates. In John 16:12 Jesus said this to His apostles, " I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." Jesus had  more things to tell his apostles but they were not yet ready to receive it. We are now ready to receive the new things Jesus tells us through His prophets and He is telling them to prepare for the future. 
100 billion would not last as long as you think it would. 

14 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

2. Members are completely fine allowing no accountability for LDS Church leaders. There is a reason the LDS Church doesn't want you, the member, to know they have $100 Billion, just in reserves. I am not saying leaders are profiting from the church, I am saying they are fully aware that these priorities would not be acceptable to the membership of the church.

They are completely acceptable to me.

14 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

3. The LDS Church constantly operates from a position of fear. We fear intellectuals. We fear feminists. We fear gays. We fear the world. So we amass an un-Godly amount of money greater than any other individual, church or comparable to whole countries so that when the world fails, the church survives.

I have no fear of any of these things but am glad the church is preparing for the future hard times that will come.
 

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5 hours ago, gopher said:

I haven't followed the story closely, but I have some whistleblowing too.  In a recent welfare training I recently attended, we were told by the storehouse director that they give you what you asked for, not what they think you need.  If you want four loaves of bread, you get four loaves of bread even if they think two loaves should be enough.

That's just one example of the reckless spending by the church that explains why they are 100 billion dollars in debt as alleged by the article in the WP.

Has this process changed in the last few years?

When I served as bishop an individual or family in need would speak with the Bishop who would assess the level of need. The bishop would then have the family meet with the RS President to determine specifically what they needed from the Storehouse. In many cases the RS Pres would pick up the order from the store house and deliver it to the individual or in some instances the individual would go directly to the storehouse with their order form. But IIRC the bishop was required to sign off on the order to approve it before it was filled. In other words, a person doesn't show up at the storehouse and say they want 4 loaves of bread. There is a system in place to determine the level of need and the level of assistance.

So you may be correct in stating that the workers at the storehouse don't deny a food order signed by the bishop as the ecclesiastic leader, but that's hardly the same thing as saying that a person gets whatever they want.

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7 minutes ago, Calm said:

Has any of that actually been demonstrated instead of just alleged though?  Do the documents demonstrate this or is it based on Nielsen’s say so at this point?

I think David Nielsen is an incredibly intelligent guy and correctly figured out what was going on. He has told the IRS where to look and what questions to ask in order to get to the bottom of it. I would highly recommend the Ensign Peaks become transparent and release high-level income statements and balance sheets for the last 22 years. In the court of public opinion, that would settle the issue definitively.

Presuming that won't happen, it is up to the IRS and the tax courts to complete their investigations, weigh the evidence and make the judgment. Until then everything is just "alleged," but I find Nielsen to be a compelling witness.

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never mind...I am not up to dissecting stuff today...

And my iPad is making it impossible to put up a complete post at once, so a long detailed post is undoubtedly going to be read when halfway completely and confusion will result.

I think I am going to be lazy this time and wait for someone else to do the autopsy.

Edited by Calm
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On 12/16/2019 at 9:43 PM, Gillebre said:

I believe here lay the next great test of faith for members of the Church. Satan will spread lies abroad in the earth, as in the Book of Mormon, to weaken and stagnate the mission of the Church with increasing fervor.

I believe that seeds of doubt planted by incessant mass media, and not favorable to the Gospel, will start to bear greater evil fruit in the coming years.

 

...or just the actions of the Church will cause faithful members to leave, such as myself.

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40 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Ensign Peak Advisors is being called a "charity" because it was incorporated as a tax-exempt 501C3 corporation. 

I'll just repost this without comment.

Quote

501(c)(3) tax-exemptions apply to entities that are organized and operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, literary, or educational purposes, for testing for public safety, to foster national or international amateur sports competition, for the prevention of cruelty to children, women, or animals.

 

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1 hour ago, rockpond said:

 

 

Fully agree with the blessings of sacrifice.  I think we all agree that the commandment to pay tithing isn't going away.  So, for the sake of discussion, let's say that this $100b investment portfolio does exist and that $1b in tithing is being put into it each year as a reserve.  Let's also say that they are earning a 6.5% return.  Within about 25 years the fund will reach a half a trillion dollars.  It would hit the one trillion mark a decade after that.  Is there ever a point at which we, as a church, can say:  Your tithing is sacrifice enough for the blessings of heaven and the Church can fully pay for missions.

We already did the same with contributions for meetinghouses, ward budgets, and temples.  I see missions as the next step.

Like I said before, maybe the church will decide to do that.

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12 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I think David Nielsen is an incredibly intelligent guy and correctly figured out what was going on. He has told the IRS where to look and what questions to ask in order to get to the bottom of it. I would highly recommend the Ensign Peaks become transparent and release high-level income statements and balance sheets for the last 22 years. In the court of public opinion, that would settle the issue definitively.

Presuming that won't happen, it is up to the IRS and the tax courts to complete their investigations, weigh the evidence and make the judgment. Until then everything is just "alleged," but I find Nielsen to be a compelling witness.

Do you acknowledge that David is not really a witness to much of what he claims?  Do you acknowledge that his claims are mostly based on assumptions?  Again from Helix:  

Quote

 

The allegations are two-fold:

1) The first allegation is that an auxiliary non-profit 501(c)(3) unit cannot be used solely to invest, even if the overall parent 501(c)(3), the church, spends far more money on non-profit expenses. A 501(c)(3) auxiliary unit of the church (Ensign) allegedly annually invests 1/7th of church tithing income ($1 billion), while the other 6/7th is spent on church functions. Further, Ensign is alleged to not have spent any investment on charity in 22 years.

  • The source of the $1B in tithing is a single PowerPoint slide, which doesn't call it tithing, but rather money "granted to [Ensign] on an annual basis" (page 43).
  • It further doesn't state whether some or all of this $1B came from non-profit or for-profit sources.
  • The source for $7B in annual tithing is a second-hand recollection of someone else's guess (page 20).
  • The Washington Post notes no evidence was provided for the claim of $0 spent on charity from Ensign.

2) The second allegation is that the same 501(c)(3) auxiliary unit used non-profit money fraudulently to backstop two for-profit church units.

  • A single summary PowerPoint slide (page 43) is given to support these claims, specifically that the investment fund can be used to backstop taxable entities.
  • However, no evidence was given that these payments were done fraudulently.
  • No evidence was given regarding if or how two alleged backstop payments were reported to the IRS and/or taxed, or whether the funds came from acceptable sources.

Further, the critic also alleges the church has $100 billion in accumulated wealth.

  • This $100B value is fully estimated and no evidence beyond speculation is given to support these claims.

----

The evidence is scant.  Really scant.  He hinges everything on a single PowerPoint slide, and he makes big assumptions from it. 

 

 

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1 hour ago, Duncan said:

Something I don't get is that statement by Pres. Hinckley in 2002 to that reporter in Germany when he said that contributions (paraphrasing) are transparent to the people who pay them not to everyone else. That just isn't true though. I pay tithing, I did so yestarday even. I have never heard of EPA or any of these other corporations before, I don't see an accounting sheet on the ward or stake budget-I see somethings they spend their money on but not everything. what transparency is he talking about?

If President Hinckley made that statement then he lied.  He knows better.

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2 minutes ago, pogi said:

Do you acknowledge that David is not really a witness to much of what he claims?  Do you acknowledge that his claims are mostly based on assumptions?  Again from Helix:  

 

Pogi, how would you feel if evidence is discovered that backs the claims of the whistleblowers?  

I feel sad for those that sacrificed so much financially to contribute to the Church nest egg.  

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19 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Has this process changed in the last few years?

When I served as bishop an individual or family in need would speak with the Bishop who would assess the level of need. The bishop would then have the family meet with the RS President to determine specifically what they needed from the Storehouse. In many cases the RS Pres would pick up the order from the store house and deliver it to the individual or in some instances the individual would go directly to the storehouse with their order form. But IIRC the bishop was required to sign off on the order to approve it before it was filled. In other words, a person doesn't show up at the storehouse and say they want 4 loaves of bread. There is a system in place to determine the level of need and the level of assistance.

So you may be correct in stating that the workers at the storehouse don't deny a food order signed by the bishop as the ecclesiastic leader, but that's hardly the same thing as saying that a person gets whatever they want.

I've had the opportunity to do service at a Bishop's storehouse multiple times in the last two years, and each time they always gave the kids a tour and describe how everything works before the service begins.  It's true that they can only get what is on their order form, but the forms are categorized so they have the choice of what to get within a certain category (for example, stew or chili is in the same category, so they can choose either one).  The amounts each person can get are fixed so that there is enough food at the storehouse to last until the next shipment comes in (the store house also gave each week to other soup kitchens in the neighborhood that were run by other churches so they liked to keep things in stock if possible for that as well).

Everything is of wonderful quality though.  They wouldn't let us put anything out on the shelves that wasn't in perfect condition.  If an apple had a bruise it was thrown away, for example, and not put into the five lb bags that apples were sold in.  Almost all of it was made by the church, but some things like diapers and wipes were bought at the local walmart and stocked in the storehouse.

People could come in directly off the street and receive food however, even without having a form from a bishop, but they could only be given enough food for a meal or two.  Then they were given the contact information for the transient bishop so they could go through the proper channels and come back and get more if needed.

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51 minutes ago, Analytics said:

On your first point, I find his allegations credible, and hope the IRS does a complete and fair investigation and that the results become publicly known.

On your second point, it depends upon how the IRS interprets the tax laws and the actual argument the church makes for why what EPA is doing is above board. Personally, I don't think hoarding money to purchase a state should be a tax-deductible endeavor.

I constantly have to remind my clients, it doesn't matter what you think the law should be, or what I think the law should be. We need to go with what the judge thinks the law actually is.

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8 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I think David Nielsen is an incredibly intelligent guy and correctly figured out what was going on. He has told the IRS where to look and what questions to ask in order to get to the bottom of it. I would highly recommend the Ensign Peaks become transparent and release high-level income statements and balance sheets for the last 22 years. In the court of public opinion, that would settle the issue definitively.

So "the court of public opinion" is the proper venue for sorting out complex financial issues pertaining to an unpopular religious minority?

Seriously?

8 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Presuming that won't happen, it is up to the IRS and the tax courts to complete their investigations, weigh the evidence and make the judgment. Until then everything is just "alleged," but I find Nielsen to be a compelling witness.

Because he's smart?  Aren't you the guy who just yesterday was recommending that I "consider the article Why Smart People Aren't Better at Transcending their Biased Views by Tauriq Moosa"?  Because "regardless of how intelligent and sophisticated" some people are, they can still overlook "fundamental problems"?

I have a hearing on Friday pertaining to a default judgment that was entered against my client.  The legal issues are only mildly complex: Plaintiff sued a bunch of people, including my client ("Bob").  Plaintiff served the lawsuit (the "complaint") on Bob, and several months later filed an amended complaint, but never sent it to Bob.  The plaintiff then went several years without doing anything in the litigation, but then filed a motion for default judgment against Bob, and got it.  The judgment is huge (more than $2 million).  Bob asked me to look at the litigation.  I looked, and found procedural grounds for having the judgment set aside (cancelled).  An amended complaint supersedes the original one.  The plaintiff was obligated by the procedural rules to serve the amended complaint on Bob.  He never did.  Consequently, the time for Bob to respond to the amended complaint has not yet lapsed.  Consequently, the default judgment entered against Bob is a violation of Rules 5, 15 and 55 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure, and also a violation of the "Due Process" clauses of the Utah and United States Constitutions. 

The hearing on Friday will determine if I am right.  I am pretty sure I am.  If so, then what am I to make of this?  How is it that the plaintiff (who is an attorney with 30+ years of litigation experience) messed up so badly, and then missed that he messed up?  How did the judge - who also has extensive experience in the field - err on such a fundamental and simple thing?  Both the plaintiff and the judge are very intelligent, very well-versed in the law, and very experienced in these procedural formalities.  However, they proceeded on faulty assumptions.  They did not have all the facts.  They overlooked important but basic considerations.  

Is it possible that David Nielsen is similarly situated?  As the Church noted, “Claims being currently circulated are based on a narrow perspective and limited information. The church complies with all applicable law governing our donations, investments, taxes and reserves. We continue to welcome the opportunity to work with officials to address questions they may have.”

Is it possible that David Neilsen, and his oh-so-affable brother, Lars, have perhaps struggled in "transcending their biased views"?

David Nielsen is smart.  I'm happy to go with that.  But the folks working for the Church are smart, too.  Is that "compelling" for you?  If not, why not?

As for me, here is a consideration I find "compelling":

Quote

One of the reasons I inclined to give the Church the benefit of the doubt is that it has so many antagonists (including, sadly, some members of the Church) who would be thrilled to find evidence of wrongdoing by the Church (or at least something that makes the Church look bad somehow), and in putting such evidence on public display.  Such sentiments come right out of the playbook used by folks like Ryan McKnight, Kate Kelly, John Dehlin, McKenna Denson, Craig Vernon, Tim Kosnoff, Pat Bagley, and so on.

As an attorney, I work in an adversarial setting.  I know that everything I submit to the court will be scrutinized not only by the judge, but by the court clerk (who has a law degree) and - most importantly - by opposing counsel.  I think I'm a pretty honest fellow, but knowing that everything I write will be heavily scrutinized creates a very strong incentive for me to be super-duper accurate in my citation to evidence, authorities, etc.  

I think the leaders of the Church function under a similar dynamic.  I therefore think it would be really hard for the Church to violate the law to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.  Not only because I think the Church and those who administer it are overwhelmingly good and decent, but also because they know there are all sorts of opponents and critics who are eager to find fault.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

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11 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Don't feel sad for me that I pay tithing and I won't feel sad for you that you don't.  :D 

haha, I totally get it...just...there's been so much pain in those that have struggled to remain LDS and for those that left the Church.  One of the common issues expressed is lack of trust/transparency.  I feel sad for everyone because many invest every fiber of their being into this Church and this is going to break some shelves.

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15 minutes ago, lostindc said:

Pogi, how would you feel if evidence is discovered that backs the claims of the whistleblowers?  

I feel sad for those that sacrificed so much financially to contribute to the Church nest egg.  

If evidence of wrongdoing was found that would mean a person or persons somewhere had made a mistake.  Degree of culpability could then be determined by the law.

That, however, does not obviate the commandment from God that we should pay a tithe to His church. 

If you are a member of the church the Lord had asked you to pay tithing.  He has called and set apart servants and given them stewardship for those tithes.  Alleged errors by those servants to not invalidate the Lord's commandment to you.

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4 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

If evidence of wrongdoing was found that would mean a person or persons somewhere had made a mistake.  Degree of culpability could then be determined by the law.

That, however, does not obviate the commandment from God that we should pay a tithe to His church. 

If you are a member of the church the Lord had asked you to pay tithing.  He has called and set apart servants and given them stewardship for those tithes.  Alleged errors by those servants to not invalidate the Lord's commandment to you.

All that's debatable.

I encourage members to really consider if their funds could go to other organizations that are transparent, efficient, and able to help those currently suffering instead of focusing on investments and nest eggs.

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On 12/17/2019 at 7:10 AM, stemelbow said:

If our friends are right on this and the Church can operate while also making money on the EPA investments alone, then the requirement to have the poorest among us give them money every month really seems misplaced.  THis of course becomes a bigger issue if the Church, a conglomerate corporation comparable in networth to Amazon and Walmart, is continuing to make money without paying it's fair share of taxes.  As the whistleblower and his brother indicated, it only pays taxes on a very small percentage of it's business investments.  If true, that is really appalling. 

Tithing is a commandment, remember the story of the Widow's mite?  She shouldn't have had to pay tithing, by your line of thinking, but Jesus praised her for her offering, never even suggesting she shouldn't have to pay.  That's because of the blessings it allows us to receive.  The tithes the church receives come from taxpayers, why should the Government be able to collect more tax?  They get enough.  WE pay our fair share of taxes.

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4 minutes ago, lostindc said:

Pogi, how would you feel if evidence is discovered that backs the claims of the whistleblowers?  

I've been approaching this as if it were all true.  I personally don't see any problem with practicing what you preach and putting money away.  If it is true that there is 100 billion in reserves, that would be great! I welcome the security. 

29 minutes ago, lostindc said:

I feel sad for those that sacrificed so much financially to contribute to the Church nest egg.  

Well, they may be very grateful for it in the not so distant future if predictions of economic down-turn are correct.  

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58 minutes ago, Analytics said:

On your first point, I find his allegations credible, and hope the IRS does a complete and fair investigation and that the results become publicly known.

You are free to believe whatever you want to believe...even when the evidence is scant to non-existent and coming from a source who admittedly is operating without full information. 

 

Quote

On your second point, it depends upon how the IRS interprets the tax laws and the actual argument the church makes for why what EPA is doing is above board.

Have you bothered to read the Forbes article that has been posted (multiple times now)? 

The likelihood that the church isn't doing everything "above board" is pretty much zero. 

 

Quote

Personally, I don't think hoarding money to purchase a state should be a tax-deductible endeavor.

First, the church isn't "hoarding money." It is wisely and prudently investing its money. 

Second, whether or not you think something should be a tax-deductible endeavor has nothing to do with whether or not it is a religious endeavor. And churches are allowed to raise and spend funds to further their religious endeavors. 

 

 

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