The Universal Church, one of the main evangelical cults in Brazil, was accused of illegally withdrawing from Angola $ 120 million in cash per year, often in private planes, to launder money in Israel. The main witnesses of the judicial process that begins this Thursday in Luanda are a group of shepherds who, according to an investigation, were forced to take the money out of the country by land.
The church, founded by Edir Macedo, magnate who owns the TV Record and one of the main allies of President Jair Bolsonaro, she was expelled from Angola for financial irregularities. De according to the UOL news site, the pastors were forced to take the cash in cars, from Luanda to Johannesburg, South Africa, passing through the Namibian desert, to leaders of the Universal Church, who were waiting for them in a hotel.
The main defendant is the pastor Fernando Henriques Teixeira, responsible for the TV Record in Africa, who is accused along with five other people from having raised $ 120 million per year from donations from the faithful for nearly a decade. “Everything that entered the Angolan box left the country,” said the Angolan pastor Armando Tavares, a witness to the case.
In addition, according to the file, the Brazilian founder of the church, Edir Macedo, was carrying cash from Johannesburg to Lisbon, Portugal, in his private plane.
Another form of money laundering mentioned in the case was the organization of caravans of the faithful to other countries, especially Israel, a state that is usually claimed by Brazilian neo-Pentecostal leaders: they armed themselves trips on charter flights from Luanda and each faithful was forced to carry dollars that the pastors gave them to deposit them in an Israeli account of the Universal Church. In this way, the money deposited in Israel ended up appearing as a permitted donation.
The Universal Church published a statement in which it denied the accusations and assured that it declares all the donations it receives. “Religious freedom is at risk in Angola,” the institution warned.
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