Mormon Church fined for hiding billions in shell firms

The religious organization hoarded $32 billion worth of investments before a manager blew the whistle

The Mormon Church and its investment manager will pay $5 million in fines to the US government after stashing billions of dollars’ worth of assets in shell companies, obfuscating their ownership.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on Tuesday that it had charged Ensign Peak Advisors for the firm’s handling of investments on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) – colloquially known as the Mormon Church. The company failed to correctly report the equities that it placed in 13 shell entities, according to the allegations.

The violations took place between 1997 and 2019, the commission said, adding that the portfolio had grown to around $32 billion by 2018.

Acting with the knowledge of the church leadership, Ensign Peak “went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the church’s investments, depriving the commission and the investing public of accurate market information,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement.

The Utah-headquartered Mormon Church said in a statement that the firm “received and relied upon legal counsel” to structure the investments the way it did, and was guided by a wish to maintain the privacy of its client. Ensign Peak was spun off from the investment division of the church in 1997 as a non-profit.

The parties agreed to settle the case with a $4 million fine paid by the investment manager and a $1 million penalty paid by the parent organization.

The church stressed that it ordered changes to reporting as soon as the SEC raised concerns in 2019, and said that it cooperated fully with the investigation. It added that it has “diversified reserves, including stocks, bonds, commercial and residential real estate, and agricultural properties,” which are managed “solely to support the church’s mission.”

The SEC investigation was spurred by a November 2019 whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to the Washington Post. A report claimed that the church had accumulated $100 billion in accounts meant for charitable purposes.

The whistleblower, a former senior portfolio manager at Ensign Peak, alleged that the significant sums indicated that the church leadership was misleading its followers and possibly violating federal tax rules. Charitable organizations are not required to pay taxes on their income in the US.

https://www.rt.com/news/571890-mormon-church-billions-investments/

FBI and CIA sued over assassination of civil rights icon

Malcolm X’s relatives filed a lawsuit against federal and state govt. agencies for allegedly covering up his murder 58 years ago

The family of late civil rights icon Malcolm X has filed a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit against the state of New York, the CIA, and the FBI for allegedly covering up the activist’s assassination in the 1960s. The decision was announced by his relatives and their lawyers at a press conference on Tuesday.

Malcolm X was shot dead on February 21, 1965 while preparing to deliver a speech to the Organization of Afro-American Unity at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.

“For years our family has fought for the truth to come to light concerning his murder, and we’d like our father to receive the justice that he deserves,” Ilyasah Shabazz, his daughter, said, accusing various federal and New York government agencies of concealing evidence that they “conspired to and executed their plan to assassinate Malcolm X.”

“The truth about the circumstances leading to the death of our father is important – not only to his family, but to many followers, many admirers… And it is our hope that litigation of this case will finally provide some unanswered questions.”

Malcolm X’s murder was initially pinned on three members of the Nation of Islam – Muhammad Abdul Aziz, Khalil Islam, and Thomas Hagan – who were all charged, tried, and convicted for the killing. However, after spending over 20 years in prison, in November 2021, Aziz and Islam were exonerated and awarded $36 million for wrongful convictions. That was after the Manhattan district attorney’s offices discovered that prosecutors and the FBI had withheld key evidence that would have acquitted the two men.

Attorneys for Malcolm X’s family have argued that if the government compensated Aziz and Islam, then it should also pay the activist’s daughters who “suffered the most from the assassination.”

Reuters reports that the New York Police Department has said it would not comment on pending litigation, while the FBI and CIA have yet to issue a response.

The murder of Malcolm X has long been the topic of heated debate, with some suspecting that federal authorities had conspired to assassinate the prominent civil rights activist. His killing was one of four major assassinations in the 1960s in the US, coming just two years after the murder of President John F. Kennedy and three years before the killings of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.

https://www.rt.com/news/571926-malcolm-x-family-lawsuit/

State Department explains cutting ties with Soros-funded group

US taxpayers were funding an effort to blacklist conservative news sites, according to research by the Washington Examiner

The US State Department said on Tuesday that it has pulled funding from the George Soros-backed Global Disinformation Index (GDI), after it was revealed that the organization was working to deprive conservative media outlets of advertising revenue.

GDI is a UK-based nonprofit that describes its mission as “disrupting the business of disinformation.” It does this by compiling lists of “high-risk” news and information outlets – predominantly right-leaning and anti-liberal ones – and passing these on to advertisers, which in turn refuse to run ads on the sites.

According to a recent investigation by the Washington Examiner, GDI received more than $200,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy and around $100,000 from the Global Engagement Center, both entities of the US State Department. The funding is in addition to undisclosed amounts from billionaire financier Soros and the UK Foreign Office, both of which are listed as donors on its website.

GDI’s ‘dynamic exclusion list’ features more than 2,000 websites, and the organization’s CEO, Clare Melford, claims that the blacklisting has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue of these sites.”

When GDI analyzed American news sites for potential targeting, Republican lawmakers were outraged to discover that conservative and libertarian sites were considered the “ten riskiest online news sources,” and demanded that the State Department pull its funding.

The National Endowment for Democracy told the Washington Times on Tuesday that it “will no longer provide financial support to GDI,” as it “cannot fund anything that focuses on the United States.” A spokesperson for the Global Engagement Center said that its role is to “identify foreign state and non-state disinformation narratives, trends and techniques aimed at undermining… the policies, security or stability of the United States.”

Both of the State Department offshoots remain formidable implements of American soft power. In recent months, the National Endowment for Democracy sponsored a gathering of anti-China officials and delegates in Taiwan, and promoted anti-government news outlets during protests in Iran. The Global Engagement Center, meanwhile, has funded video games to warn children about the dangers of so-called “disinformation,” releasing the games in the UK, Ukraine, Latvia, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

In the runup to the 2020 election in the US, the Global Engagement Center also played a key role in pressuring Twitter to censor accounts linked “to the Russian government,” despite being unable to prove any ties.

https://www.rt.com/news/571935-state-department-soros-disinformation/