Filtration reveals the riches of a religious order stained by the sexual scandal |The new Herald

In January, Carlos Lomena, a plantation truck driver who lost his job during the pandemic, begged a judge to prevent his landlord from evicting him.

Lomena, 37, expected to get just a deal in court.He had emigrated from Venezuela after high school with the feeling that the United States had a fairer legal system.

In a letter addressed to Judge Floridano, he referred to the recent extension of the National Moratorium on Evictions during the Coronavirus outbreak and asked for more time to pay his backward rent.

"I don't have a place where to go," Lomena wrote, "not even the money to move to another apartment".

His homemade - a company has formed by real estate companies in Miami and Iowa - did not let himself be moved by his pleas.The company pressed the court to evict it and, at the beginning of February, the judge failed that Lomena had not presented the correct form to avoid its eviction.A few days later, in full swing of the pandemic, Broward's police placed a great warning in thick red letters in which Lomena was ordered to evict the house in the Axis At One Pine complex within 24hours or would be arrested by invasion.

The Lomena building is part of an increasing number of unifamiliary apartment and housing complexes owned by large real estate companies that, in some cases, have thousands of properties throughout the country and use investors fund.

A set of filtered documents, reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and 150 allied media, show that the Lomena building had unusual and controversial investors: extraterritorial trusts with hundreds of millions of dollars of the legionaries of Christ of Christ, a Catholic order dishonored by an international pedophilia scandal.

Confidential records show that trusts became a secret partner in the structure of the Lomena Apartment Complex, working with the owner to invest $ 2 million in the complex in 2015.The trusts invested millions in other modest residential buildings in Florida, Texas, Iowa, Indiana and Illinois.

High profile operations of Christ's legionaries began to discreetly establish one of a trio of New Zealand trusts designed to deposit the money of the legionaries shortly after the Vatican announced in 2010 that it would confiscate the operations of the problem order and launch a new investigation,According to filtered records.

Two of these trusts, formed shortly after, secretly moved millions of dollars throughout the world.This included more than $ 14 million channeled in investments in apartments complex.In comments to ICIJ, Pensam said he has not received information indicating that he received investments from the legionaries.

These two trusts would have almost $ 300 million in assets dedicated to the legionaries of Christ, according to the filtered records, at a time when victims of sexual abuse by their priests sought an economic compensation of the order through demandsand of a commission supervised by the Vatican.

In response to the questions about whether the legionaries revealed the trusts to the Vatican, the order told ICIJ that "religious institutes do not have the obligation to send detailed information to the Vatican about their internal financial decisions or their organization".

In statements to ICIJ, the legionaries recognized that they had created one of the three trusts, but they distanced themselves from the other two, which contained most of the funds designated for legionaries.The Order said that it was not aware of the operations of the other two trusts.The two trusts were financed by rods of a prominent industrial family in Mexico, among which is Father Luis Garza Medina, one of the main leaders of the Legionaries.A spokesman who answered ICIJ's questions about Father Garza said that he has no control over trusts.

A review of the documents leaked by the ICIJ shows deep connections with the order in the three trusts, which share the same address in New Zealand and have the same trusts by administering them.

Garza's spokesman declared that secret trusts were strictly charitable and were dedicated to the support of elderly priests and other Catholic causes, and that trusts have only made charitable distributions.

The leaked documents are part of the Pandora Papers, the millions of secret archives that constitute the core of a worldwide investigation conducted by the ICIJ and its media partners, including the Miami Herald, the BBC, the Washington Post, L'Epresso ofItaly, the country of Spain and Mexican publications fifth element Lab and process.The records related to the legionaries of Christ.

The collection contains large amounts of data on several rich investors who used extraterritorial entities to channel money to the real estate sector.

They are part of a growing class of international investors in real estate companies that often use hard hand tactics to maximize the rate of properties occupied by low and medium income tenants.

Dozens of current and previous tenants of the buildings owned by PENSAM interviewed for this report described problems with their units, including floods, fungi and mold, damaged appliances and dangerous elevators.PENSAM is usually associated with BH Management Services, based in Iowa, which is responsible for the daily administration of its buildings.

A review of more than 100 judicial cases in Florida showed that property administrators added strong penalties to the backward payments of the rent and sought the rapid eviction of tenants who could not pay the rent.The tenants said that the customer service was difficult to contact and that eviction notices seemed to be a tool to manipulate tenants.In a statement, BH Management said that it coordinates the collection of rentals "under the strict compliance with the rental contracts and the law, including the order of the CDC on evictions".

The high yields that financial companies promise to their wealthy investors inevitably lead to squeeze to vulnerable tenants, according to Jim Baker, executive director of Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a non -profit organization that supervises private capital companies and other greatsInvestors.

"This is the problem of the growing inequality of crystallized world wealth in an industry," said Baker.

In 2013, Pensam and BH Management evicted Collette Northrop and their children from an apartment in Dunedin, Florida, after the family stopped paying $ 895, according to judicial records.Just a few months earlier, the trusts that keep money for the legionaries of Christ had secretly invested at least $ 1 million for the purchase of the Apartment Complex by Pensam.Northrop said that the family moved to a motel and that their children changed to a new high school."At that time we had no home," said Northrop.“The children asked:‘ How are we going to tell the people we live in a hotel?All this is devastating for a family ".

‘The Millionaires of Christ’

In 1941, a charismatic Mexican priest named Marcial Maciel founded the legionaries of Christ, a Catholic order that would be known for his intense dedication to courting the rich patronics.Some came to call the order of Maciel "the millionaires of Christ".

Throughout six decades, a cult of personality around the founder of the group grew.The members of the order were taught that Maciel was a "living holy".Its creation grew and became a global force by growing links with Vatican officials, very rich and conservative republican republican Catholics in the United States.

Maciel became "the largest fund collector of the modern church";and "your greatest criminal," according to Jason Berry, a investigation reporter who deepened the legionaries and their leader.

At the beginning of 1997, Berry and a Hartford Courant reporter wrote a first -flat article that exposed Maciel's sexual predation decades, informing that nine men had presented themselves to accuse him of having sexually abused them when they were children or young people who wereprepared to be priests.

Before the article was published, Berry reported later, one of Maciel's confidants, the Reverend Luis Garza, “traveled to the houses of the legionaries in several countries to warn of the next article, stating that it would be based on lies and sayingTo the legionaries...that the report did not read if they saw a copy ".

In 2006, after being plagued for years of accusations against the founder of the Legionaries, the Vatican investigated about 100 accusations of abuse against Maciel and withdrew it from the Ministry with the order to adopt a “life of prayer and penance”.

When Maciel died in 2008, the scandal did not die with him.The revelations that several children had engendered with different women attracted more negative attention towards the legionaries of Christ.The order was increasingly seen as a ballast for the Vatican.

In the middle of the continuous scrutiny, much of the leadership of the order passed to Garza, known as the architect of its complex finance.Garza came from the family that has controlled the Mexican conglomerate Alfa for decades.Garza joined the legionaries after graduating from Stanford University, and quickly rose to becoming one of Maciel's most confident.

On May 1, 2010, the Vatican announced that it would take control of the legionaries' operations, the most drastic action of the Church against a Catholic order during the World Abuse scandal.The Vatican would examine the finance of the order and the possible sexual crimes and establish a commission to compensate for their victims.

The following month, one of Maciel's children filed a law.

In July 2010 - two days before the official designated by the Vatican took the reins of the Legion reform - Luis Garza discreetly helped establish the first of the three secret trusts in New Zealand that would keep money for the legionaries for the legionaries.

The Vatican did not answer directly to the questions about the trusts, but said that his effort to reform the order focused mainly on matters related to its founder and its structure.

During his investigation, the Vatican seemed to be operating in the belief that the order had little money.The Vatican Supervisor of the Legionaries, Cardinal Valasio de Paolis, wrote in September 2011 that the financial situation of the order was "serious and challenging" and that some victims asked for "huge sums that the order cannot afford at all," according toA 2014 book by the Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi based on recorded records of sexual abuse of the Vatican.

At the time when trusts were created, New Zealand was a popular destination for people who were looking to hide money abroad using trusts.The trusts containing money for the Legion maintained four Swiss bank accounts, including one in a gin headquarters, Lombard Odier, which the United States Department of Justice discovered later that it had helped US clients to hide active activeUnited States tax authorities.

Garza's sister, Roberta Garza, who left the secular branch of the legionaries after high school, told the ICIJ that, historically, the order used extraterritorial structures to divert religious and charity money to more selfish purposes, including the style ofMaciel's luxurious life, his secret children and drug habits."Much of his money was kept out of the legionaries by his financiers, by people with power that are completely faithful to order," said Roberta Garza."So they will never find it".

"We do not know what Roberta Garza is based to make his statements," said Father Aaron Smith, spokesman for the Legionaries."We have not found any proof of the use of extraterritorial structures to divert religious and charitable money from the congregation to finance what we know about Maciel's double life".

While the New Zealand trusts silently created their investment portfolios, Christ's legionaries faced legal threats on multiple fronts.

In a civil litigation that began in 2011, Luis Garza and other members of the Legion were accused of cheating a Catholic old woman: $ 60 million in charity donations to the order.According to The Associated Press, Garza was one of the leaders of the legionaries responsible for distributing the money of women's trusts, although he was not a defendant in the case.The Legion then said that it did not improperly influence the widow.The case was subsequently dismissed by a Rhode Island judge who said that the woman's niece had no capacity to sue.

The Milan Police opened a criminal investigation in 2013 on the high clergy of the legionaries offered a bribe to induce an Italian victim of sexual abuse to retract from the testimony he had given to the prosecutors.Four members of the order were accused of attempted extortion and obstruction of justice.The case is pending.

Garza himself was accused of pedophilia in a 2016 demand that attracted the attention of the media, but was withdrawn in 2019.At that time, a spokesman for the Legionaries said that Garza "categorically denies his participation in this or any other abuse".The internal investigation of the order exiled to Garza.In May, the lawyers of the alleged victim told L’Antresso, a partner of the ICIJ in Italy, who are exploring the way to re -file the demand.

In November 2017, L’Antresso published an investigation into a part of the extraterritorial finances of the Legionaries of Christ, revealing that $ 300 million had moved through a company owned by the order in the Bermuda more than a decade before.Although the New Zealand trusts were active when this information was made public, they were still a well -kept secret.Responding in 2017 to the revelations of its financial activities in Bermuda and other tax havens, the order declared that “it does not own extraterritorial companies, nor does it have resources in extraterritorial companies” ”.

The order described the accounts in tax havens as a relic of the past reign of Maciel.

In February 2020, Pope Francis told the Legionaries of Christ that the order had been stained by the cult of personality that surrounded its founder, and, even after a decade of greatest supervision by the Vatican, the order stillIt was not totally renovated.

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‘Spiritual projects’

Pensam Capital is part of a wave of new investment companies that have invested billions of dollars in the world real estate market after the 2008 financial crisis, a trend that has raised the fear that the financial sector takes control of housing.

In 2017, a research document backed by the United Nations warned that the “increasing role and unprecedented domain of financial markets and companies in the housing sector” were contributing to the increase in poverty, evictions and lack ofHousing worldwide.

On its website, Pensam Capital presumes having invested more than $ 3,500 million in rental properties since 2009, and announces, among its services, “direct investments” in real estate.

While the scandal swirled around the legionaries of Christ, the assets of two of the New Zealand trusts moved all over the world and several rental properties in the United States.

Through Capital Pensam, the trusts invested in at least eight apartment complexes in Florida, Texas, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa.In the documents filtered and obtained by the ICIJ, PENSAM set its profitability objective in about 15 percent annually on its rental properties, a performance that would comfortably exceed normal yields of the stock market.

The trusts made dozens of other investments, including participations in a chain of rehabilitation centers, a company of Texas -based medical devices and a Mexican company of nutritional supplements.

The structure used by trusts to make investments seems to be designed both to maintain secret and to allow Christ's legionaries legally distancing themselves from large money storage.

"The trusts allow you to enjoy things when it is the right time, but they do not have the disadvantages of being technically owners of the money," Andrés Knobel, a Tax Justice Network researcher, told ICIJ Andrés Knobel, who has widely studied the trusts."On paper, they can say:" I have nothing to do with this. ".

New Zealand trusts were not obliged to make public statements that link them to the leaders of the Legionaries of Christ.

Asaciti's filtered documents from 2004 to 2017 describe New Zealand as a country that “offers the advantages of established extraterritorial jurisdiction” without the stigma of a known fiscal paradise.The documents affirm that the New Zealand trusts do not have to register in any government entity of New Zealand and that they are ideal for those who seek to protect their assets from creditors and tax collectors.(In 2017, after ICIJ report colleagues revealed that New Zealand is a popular destination for rich to hide their assets, the country reinforced their regulation of trusts.)

To carry out investments in the United States, New Zealand trusts used a ghost company of Delaware called Lowndes Holdings Inc.Lowndes public archives do not contain any trace of their relationship with the trusts or legionaries of Christ.

The Legionaries of Christ and its leaders were not subject to any sanction or were involved in any criminal proceedings in the United States.But investments continue to suggest how easy it is to invest millions of dollars in the United States real estate sector maintaining a low profile.Experts blame the laxity of federal regulations to allow secrecy that makes real estate investment in the United States attractive to those who seek to hide money.

Pensam said in a statement that “a comprehensive program for fulfilling‘ knows its client ’is attacked when it analyzes whether it accepts a new investor or continues a relationship with an existing investor” ”.He said that "he did not receive, nor have he received, no information that led Pensam to believe that any of his investors has been or is currently governed or managed by the legionaries of Christ".

In their comments to the ICIJ, the Legionaries of Christ recognized that they had created one of the three trusts - the retirement and medical trust - to receive donations that financed the life of elderly priests.The Legionaries of Christ said they had no knowledge of the operations or the conditions of the two trusts that keep most of the money: Alfaomega Trust and Salus Trust.These two trusts have hundreds of millions in assets dedicated to retirement and medical charitable trust.The two trusts were financed separately by Garza and two of their brothers, and a spokesman said that the herza have no control over the trusts.

A spokesman for Christ's legionaries said it would be wrong to "attribute any decision, investment or activity" of the two trusts to the order.But the spokesman acknowledged that the Legionaries of Christ sometimes requested "donations" to the two trusts, "who are free to grant or denied these requests".

However, a review of numerous filtered records shows that the three trusts are widely linked to the highest levels of the legionaries of Christ.

Outstanding order officials help govern the three trusts.The three trusts have the same homes, the same trusts, are managed by the same fiduciary company and have accounts in the same Swiss banks.A financial agent of the Legionaries of Christ called Alejandro Páez Aragón is the "protector" of the Alphaomega and Salus trusts, a position that gives him a wide influence on the trusts.At the time when the trusts were created, Páez Aragón was the director of the main private investment vehicle of the Order, the Integer Group.Páez Aragón is also brother -in -law of Luis Garza.

In a 2016 filtered memorandum, a neozyrey fiscal lawyer who analyzed the three trusts described the Alphaomega and Salus trusts as “essentially ducts for retirement and medical charitable trust.

The administrators of the trusts expected them to be qualified as purely "charitable or religious" in order to obtain the benefits of the New Zealand Fiscal Treaty with the United States.But the lawyer's memorandum warned that Alphaomega and Salus trusts had "no express prohibition of appointing non -beneficial beneficiaries".

The lawyer recommended restricting trusts for strictly beneficial purposes, eliminating the possibility that certain people would become beneficiaries.It is not clear if this change came to be made.

In statements to ICIJ, a spokesman for Alphaomega and Salus trusts said the trusts were destined to “help elderly priests and consecrated persons, as well as support social, charitable and spiritual projects based on Catholic teachings”.The charitable donations for the elderly include "the financing of subsistence expenses, such as accommodation, food and medical needs," said the spokesman, and added that the trust had opened bank accounts in Switzerland because "the financial industry ofThat country is very advanced and allows an open investment architecture, where banks have access to many financial products and have competition to understand and recommend them ”.

A spokesman for the trusts said that they were formed in New Zealand because the country is "professional, reliable, cooperative and serious", and added that the trusts remained there after the new regulations to “take advantage of the most strict legal and transparency lawsof the country instead of moving to a country with less strict laws ”.

The spokesman said that trusts can change their recipients at any time.

In a presentation without date at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) obtained by the ICIJ, the Retirement and Medical Charitable Trust claims a tax exemption as a purely beneficial or religious organization.

A spokesman who answered the questions asked to Garza said that “the trusts have provided an average of $ 1.0 million annually to provide food, housing and medical care to a large number of priests, nuns and retired and older consecrated persons ”.

‘Live a nightmare’

At the beginning of September 2015, New Zealand trusts used Lowndes Holdings to invest $ 2 million in the complex where Carlos Lomena would live in Plantation, Florida.According to its website, Pensam would add value to its investment improving the exteriors of the apartments, changing the gardening and making other improvements.Think told ICIJ that it had invested millions in complex renovations.

The complex was legally owned by a holding company called PBH Plantation LLC, an apparent nod to the association between Pensam Capital and BH Management.

The ICIJ visited the buildings at the end of June, just after PENSAM allegedly sold the complex for $ 46 million to a real estate management company based in Miami.

The facades of four -storey buildings are attractive, with modern glass railings on the balconies of the apartments and terrible colors that combine well with the tropical landscape.Beyond the facades, the outer halls show signs of water damage and mold cover the doors of the apartments.At the door of an old resident who was expelled in May, there was a great eviction notice.

Tenants rented in PBH Plantation said the administration hastened to impose painful fines for delay.

“If you spend three days of the rental day, they charge you $ 100 delay.If you spend three more days after that, you receive a letter that talks about eviction, ”said an old PBH Plantation tenant, who left the apartment complex due to an increase in rent and that asked to remain in anonymity.

Earl Walker, a tenant of the Plantation complex, said that PBH Plantation took months to solve the damage caused by water and leaks in his unit, but hastened to punish him when he paid the rent a little beyond the three -day grace period.“I had a leak here, and it took months to come to fix this.But I have delayed a couple of hours, and so they cling to what they say, ”Walker said about the fine for delay."That is not fair".

Mariya Vazhelyuk, mother of two children, said that her third floor apartment has had many leaks during the storms and that her children developed respiratory problems during her first months there, a reaction, according to her, to the mold.He said that several months before Pensam sold the building, the door of an elevator closed on a stroller with one of his children inside.The boy was unharmed, he said, but the cartola was trapped between the doors.

According to public records, Broward County inspectors found 40 infractions related to the three elevators of the complex between February 2018 and April 2021, including expired permits, damaged mechanisms to prevent the doors of elevators from opening between floors, telephonesAND EMERGENCY AWARDS DISPLAYED AND EXPINATORS DISCLAED.

In August 2019, the city of Plantation issued a fine for “excessive mold” on the stairs and corridors of the entire complex, as well as a “smell discomfort” for garbage.

Several old tenants of the buildings owned by Pensam complained about judicial costs and other rates associated with eviction procedures.

A 2017 eviction demand presentation of one of the Florida's apartment complexlawyers and judicial costs, $ 203 in delay charges and about $ 175 in “other charges”, which led the total to $ 3,000.02.This building was also supervised by BH Management.

"These companies consider that delay positions and judicial rates are an important way to increase their income," Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project told ICIJ."This process is intended to extract the greatest amount of money from the poorest tenants".

What bothers Lomena's most of his ordeal was the lack of will for PBH Plantation to work with him, even during the moratorium of evictions.In his January letter to the judge, Lomena pointed out that he had just started in a new job, although he had not yet received his first payment.

The eviction process lasted for weeks, during which Lomena sold almost all her furniture on Facebook Marketplace, to be able to leave with little time in advance if she lost the case."I sold everything," says Lomena."Being there was like living a nightmare".

A BH Management Services spokesman said that he is “responsible for coordinating the collection of rent to the tenants, what we do under the strict compliance with the lease and law, including the order of the CDC on evictions during the pandemic of the pandemic ofCOVID-19 ".

Lomena had called lawyers to help him, but none offered him a rate he could pay.So he tried to fight the case alone.As the federal form of the Disease Control and Prevention Centers (CDC) had not submitted for the protection against eviction - he had only invoked the Moratory of the CDC in his letter to the Court - the judge approved the eviction on the 4th offebruary.

In a statement to the ICIJ, Pensam said that BH Management "committed to not evict any resident for lack of rent when a valid statement of the CDCs was submitted".Pensam said that "delay rates and legal fees are established in each lease contract" and "are consistent with industry standards, and comply with federal, state and local laws".

A week after the judge's judgment, Lomena arrived home and found two police eviction notices at the door of his house.Lomena hastened to find a place to live, and rented a room for $ 700 a month in the house of an old woman.

Lomena said her new landlord allows you to use the kitchen only on Sundays, when you cook the food for the rest of the week.He said he reached an agreement with PBH Plantation to settle his debt - a mixture of rentals, delay rates, lawyer fees and other charges - in installments of about $ 300 per month.

Lomena said he hopes to move to his own apartment, but he is concerned that no landlord accepts him due to his eviction, one of the main long -term consequences of eviction, according to housing activists.

"I don't feel that I can keep me afloat here," Lomena said."I want to move on, save some money and be happy".

Mathieu Tourliere, Andrea Cárdenas, Georgina Zerega, Leo Sisti, Mike Hudson, Dean Starkman, Kathryn Kranhold, Margot Gibbs, Brenda Medina, Agustín Armendáriz and Emilia Díaz-Struck of the ICIJ contributed to this report.

The Pandora Papers is a global collaboration between the Miami Herald and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a non -profit organization.If you like this type of journalism, make a donation to the ICIJ to support it.

This story was originally posted on October 7, 2021 2:01 pm.