If this is true someone added a lot of zeros to the numbers..
Elders in Spain Steal Millions from Congregation
by cappytan 49 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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Village Idiot
Maybe the sum was a typo? Off by two zeros? -
StarTrekAngel
I am on the same boat as you all but lets not make assumptions
Who said that all the donations had to come from Spain alone?
Who said that a handful of rich JW did not see this as a tax shelter? We can't take an average literally. It is just that, an average.
The actual news article says this started in 2001. The news article is also dated Jan 22. If we take the years into account when calculating the average, then you are now about 10,000 euros per year, per publisher. Still a high number, but much lower than previously estimated. Like I said, it is just an average.
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OrphanCrow
So.
They are finally getting caught.
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Simon
If you look at the donors for any hospital you will typically see a few make very sizeable donations, more make large donations and many make smaller donations.
Suppose a few very wealthy JWs were sufficiently convinced that they would have their name on the wall, they could well contribute enough that the average required to make up the remainder could be dramatically reduced to 'more believable' levels.
Ultimately, we just have to wait and see what other information comes out - I don't think it does any good being dogmatic about something being right or wrong until that happens.
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StarTrekAngel
There is another article on a different newspaper (el pais, which a recognized and respectable outlet) with a case that sounds too much like this one but with different numbers.
In this case it was one elder, who talked a bunch of other elders into an investment with huge returns. In this case they are talking of about 70 million euros, which is close to the 80 million the other case claims was kept in Swiss banks. In this case the money was also transfered to a swiss bank but they were actually paying back interest to the investors (about 2500 individual brothers invested) until the money flow stopped. One brother claims the instigator was traveling around congos looking for wealthy people. Some investors got money together with their family in upwards of 49,000 euros. Some of the numbers, regarding the number of elders and the sentence to those who got caught, match the case mentioned in this thread. Also, the fact that they only caught the secondary criminal but the mastermind is on the run (just like the first article on this thread)
http://ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2014/12/02/catalunya/1417547144_900562.html
This other one claims the mastermind was a witness but only 700 out of more than 2000 investors were witnesses
http://infocatolica.com/blog/infories.php/1412020641-juzgan-a-varios-testigos-de-j
In any case all these articles are no more than 2 months old. I guess we will hear more.
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cappytan
From the article: The events date back to 2001...
That much money could very well have been bilked over that long of a period.
170,000,000 / 13 = 13,076,923 per year.
13,076,923 / 1,300 = 10,000 +/- average.
Factor in that perhaps there were some brothers that were exorbitantly richer than others and may have contributed large sums of money, or there may have been folks that died that had the "hospital" fund as their life insurance beneficiary.
Regardless, it seems plausible for this to be true.
If it is true, I'm sure there will be more said about it and more will come out.
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EDIT: Well, took me a while to do the math, and during that time, y'all ended up saying the same things.
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EdenOne
1300 members donated 170.000.000 € ?? Really?? That's an average of 130.769,23€ per publisher. (146.950,00$ USD) Something's not right about that figure. Even if 35 very wealthy brothers could donate 70.000.000€, (two million each), that would still average 79.051,00 € on each of the 1265 remaining publishers. That's more or less one year's salary of a well-paid CEO of a sizeable corporation in Spain. That's simply not believable, even more considering the economical crisis in Spain. The Bethel in Spain is the only entity that could hypothetically hold so much money.
Eden
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Simon
Sounds like a case of Affinity Fraud which sadly also happens more regularly but on a smaller scale within congregations.
Any group that promotes the idea of insiders being specially trusted and honest are at risk of this kind of scam by people who will specifically target them and take advantage of their willingness to take things at face value.
The WTS promotion that taking other members of the congregation to court makes them especially good targets - even if caught there is unlikely to be criminal repercussions in many cases - the people still walk away with the money!
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StarTrekAngel
One brother claimed he was approached by the perpetrator as soon as he closed on the sale of a house or apartment and talked him into investing the $50,000 he had gotten from it.