Latter-Day Saints Church Fined Millions for Allegedly Using Shell Companies to Hide Assets: SEC

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon church, has been fined millions of dollars for supposedly hiding the size and scope of its actual investments, which now likely total more than $40 billion.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced on Tuesday that it had conducted an extensive investigation into the finances of the LDS church that stretched back decades. According to the SEC, between 1997 and 2019, the church and its investment firm, Ensign Peak, funneled funds through 13 shell companies in order to obscure the extent of the church’s assets, which are currently estimated to be close to $44 billion. The LDS church manages to maintain such a well-stocked treasury because it asks its members to donate a tenth of their earnings, a biblical practice known as “tithing.”

The SEC statement claimed that church and firm leaders believed that the LDS church would face “negative consequences,” should the full scope of its investments be made known. To prevent that from happening, “the LDS Church’s investment manager, with the Church’s knowledge, went to great lengths to avoid disclosing the Church’s investments,” the SEC said.

The SEC also alleged that the names of different church leaders were utilized on various disclosure forms to further obfuscate the appropriation of funds. Meanwhile, the church and Ensign Peak had actually invested heavily in global enterprises, like Apple, Microsoft, United Health, Google, Exxon Mobil, and Doe Chemical, the Daily Mail reported. (Read more from “Latter-Day Saints Church Fined Millions for Allegedly Using Shell Companies to Hide Assets: SEC” HERE)

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