Mormon Whistleblower: Church’s Investment Firm Masquerades as Charity | 60 Minutes

 

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Mormon David Nielsen left his job at Ensign Peak Advisors, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ investment firm, and filed an IRS whistleblower complaint. He speaks with Sharyn Alfonsi.

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From Religion Unplugged:

The filing to the IRS alleges that EPA has made zero religious, educational or charitable distributions in 22 years.

According to tax experts, that may not be a problem for a 509(a)3 organization, depending on more nuanced details of its registration which are not publicly available on the IRS website or the organizations 990-t annual filings. 

“EPA is the reserve of the reserves,” a whistleblower is quoted as saying in the document. It suggests tithing surplus flows to EPA where it is “merged, sliced and diced into portfolios and limited liability companies designed to fly under radars and reporting limits.”

The document obtained by Religion Unplugged makes several additional allegations about EPA.

The 74-page document filed with the IRS and obtained by Religion Unplugged shows that Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc. (EPA) owned assets under management grew to more than $100 billion from $10 billion in the past 22 years, fueled by a mix of investment strategy and tithe money from church members. 

Religion Unplugged reached EPA’s managing director Roger Clark by phone on Monday, offering to explain key parts of this story and to ask questions for EPA to give a response. “We don’t really answer questions with the public press. So thanks,” he said, before hanging up the phone.

Ensign Peak Advisors' articles of incorporation confirm Ensign Peak is an arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As registered under section 509(a)3 of the Internal Revenue Code, Ensign Peak Advisors, Inc. (EPA) is a “supporting organization” of the Church under article 3 in its registration document. Upon dissolution, all Ensign Peak assets go the Church or affiliated organizations according to article 5 and that article cannot be changed without “the written consent of The First Presidency” of the Church. Because Ensign Peak Advisers is a support organization to a church it is not subject to disclosure requirements that other non-profit organizations are required to make.  

. . . The whistleblower worked with Nielsen on a two-month research project to research and explain the inner workings of EPA.

> The complaint (Form 211) was filed with the IRS whistleblower office on Nov. 15, 2019 and received by the IRS on Nov. 22, 2019.

> Nielsen has chosen to go public with the allegations by releasing the report online and explaining the allegations in videos.

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A 7-minute summary of the full financial picture of America's wealthiest religion

Mormons and money: An unorthodox and messy history of ...

theconversation.com › mormons-and-money-an-unorthodox-and-messy-history-of-chur...

▶ 7:16

Dec 20, 2019 - Uploaded by Letter to an IRS Director

mesazona.blogspot.com

For-Profit Enterprise Schemes / The Tax-Exempt Mormon Church

By Samuel Moore - March 6, 2020   https://bovnews.com

7 - 8 minutes

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Nope

Report: Mormon church investment fund had nearly $38 billion

Updated 2:40 pm CST, Saturday, March 7, 2020

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The Church of Jesus Chris of Latter-day Saints' largest investment fund had nearly $38 billion in stocks and mutual funds at the end of 2019, according to a filing that sheds new light on the faith's finances.
The fund called Ensign Peak Advisors submitted a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Feb. 14.
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Link > https://www.scribd.com/document/450143097/Ensign-Peak-Advisors-Stock-Holdings 
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The church also owned $930 million in Google stock and $855 million in Amazon.
Mormon Church Moves Public Stock Holdings to Single Entity
Published March 7, 2020 15:03 pm PST
Source > Truth & Transparency

"This morning, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Ensign Peak Advisors, the investment arm of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, reported a total of $38.7 billion of holdings in the U.S. stock market.

Truth & Transparency first reported on this topic in May 2018 by uncovering $32 billion traded by 13 shell companies connected to the Church, and again last month when revealing the increased value of those shell companies as well as venture capital investments made by another shell company connected to the Church. . . 

Last month, in another unprecedented move, the Church gave an exclusive interview to the Wall Street Journal discussing the portfolio, admitting to having intentionally obfuscated the paper trail with the shell companies discovered by Truth & Transparency. They feared that members would reduce their tithing donations to the Church.

Today’s story from the Tribune implies that this $38 billion is in addition to the money already reported by Truth & Transparency saying that Ensign Peak’s portfolio is “more diversified than any of those smaller funds.” However, closer analysis of the data suggests otherwise.. .

While it is true that Ensign Peak filed a report with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission, none of the other 13 shell companies did, a fact the Tribune originally failed to report.

This suggests that the shares were moved under the known corporate umbrella of the Church, another unprecedented and surprising move.

> This hypothesis is supported by comparing the data from Ensign Peak’s most recent filing and the previous quarter’s filings from the shell companies. The number of entities the Church had invested only grew from 1,646 to 1,650 and the amount of shares traded between the two quarters is largely negligible.

> Additionally, the difference in shares between the two reports could be a result of consolidating other shell companies than the ones currently known. An entity only has to file these public reports if over $100 million is held at the end of the quarter. It is completely possible that the Church has other entities under its corporate umbrella that were not trading at that threshold.

The code used to perform the data analysis for this article can be found here.

In the coming days, Truth & Transparency will be publishing interactive graphs illustrating the known worth of the Mormon Church’s portfolio over time.

14 March 2020

A Cloak of Secrecy Persists @ "City Creek Lite" Under The Guise of "The Grove on Main Street"

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14 March 2020

A Cloak of Secrecy Persists @ "City Creek Lite" Under The Guise of "The Grove on Main Street"

Take your pick of whatever city officials here in Mesa, AZ have chosen to call it, but the bare fact remains that NO FINANCIAL DETAILS WERE EVERY DISCLOSED TO THE PUBLIC over the "Temple Area Transformation"

It's one thing to claim an exemption for "a non-profit" status organization but when a for-profit religion is in the business of real estate development - and uses public taxpayers municipal funds to for all the underground infrastructure - it is time way over due to provide both "an abundance of clarity" and accountability.

Especially when development officers in City Creek Reserve, Inc. have stated publicly that they've been talking with city officials for years and buying up more than 90 properties around the Mesa LDS Temple Area neighborhood for a Massive Mormon Make-Over on the eastern fringe of downtown to transform Mesa into a satellite of Salt Lake City.
That's no secret. It's a smaller-scale 10-acre version of the 23-acre project called City Creek Mall in Temple Square.

< "City Creek Center Lite"@ SEC Main/Mesa Drive

The complaint alleges a series of payments from EPA totaling $1.4 billion to help construct the City Creek Center mall in Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, which features a retractable roof, luxury storefronts and simulated creek with live trout. The LDS Church and its developers aimed to create a new urbanism in downtown Salt Lake City. The success of that expenditure of billions is open to conflicting opinions.

The mall was developed by Property Reserve, Inc., which is a commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and retail manager Taubman Centers Inc. according to a press release from the LDS Church on Oct. 3, 2006. . .

...City Creek Center is being developed by Property Reserve Inc., the church’s real-estate development arm, and its money comes from other real-estate ventures. . .

The mall was developed by Property Reserve, Inc., which is a commercial real estate division of the Corporation of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and retail manager Taubman Centers Inc. according to a press release from the LDS Church on Oct. 3, 2006. . .

...City Creek Center is being developed by Property Reserve Inc., the church’s real-estate development arm, and its money comes from other real-estate ventures. . .

The whistleblower complaint alleges that $1.4 billion of funding from EPA did go toward the mall project and came from a funding pool that included tithing dollars

> The mall opened in 2012 with 100 stores in more than 700,000 square feet of retail space and is part of downtown Salt Lake City revitalization plans that includes office space and residential towers. 

> One member of the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric and an executive in the LDS for-profit businesses, Keith McMullin, told Bloomberg BusinessWeek in 2012 that tithes do not go to the church’s for-profit endeavors and did not go to City Creek Center. 

The whistleblower complaint to the IRS raises the question of whether church leaders such as McMullin made honest or false public statements about financing sources for the mall project both before and after construction of the mall. Here in Mesa, apparently no one ever asked - the entire project in two phases that doubled the initial proposal - was fast-tracked through the development process and approval by the Mesa City Council.