Page 27 - 072817

Groton Daily Independent
Friday, July 28, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 028 ~ 27 of 54
Brazil church rejects abuse claims detailed in AP stories By PETER PRENGAMAN, Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — One of Word of Faith Fellowship’s two churches in Brazil has rejected claims made by former members that they were subjected to physical and verbal abuse at the hands of ministers and that young congregants were sent to the mother church in North Carolina and forced to work without pay.
The allegations were detailed in investigative stories published by The Associated Press this week.
In a statement released late Wednesday, pastors of the Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema church in Franco da Rocha, Brazil, called the former members’ accusations “many lies and distorted facts.”
The statement, published in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, said the church had maintained a strong relationship with pastors at the Word of Faith Fellowship in Spindale, North Carolina, for 30 years. “They are good people, they live God’s love and in trying to help people they have been slandered,” it read.
The statement also said the church in Brazil did “not tolerate or permit any form of abuse in our ministry.”
Word of Faith Fellowship is an evangelical church founded in North Carolina in 1979 by Jane Whaley, a former math teacher, and her husband, Sam. It has branches in Brazil and Ghana, along with af liations in other countries.
This week’s AP stories — based on accounts of dozens of former members, a review of police reports and interviews with authorities in Brazil and the United States — also detailed how the North Carolina church took over its two Brazilian congregations over the course of many years, instilling its rigid doctrine in Ministerio Evangelico Comunidade Rhema and Ministerio Verbo Vivo church in Sao Joaquim de Bicas.
Many former members said they were beaten during sessions aimed at expunging devils, suffered psy- chological domination by pastors and were cut off from family members upon leaving the church.
Leaders of the Word of Faith Fellowship and both churches in Brazil did not respond to numerous re- quests for comment made by the AP before publication of the stories.
Scaramucci reports more than $50m in assets By BERNARD CONDON, AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — He vows to be a fresh voice in the Trump administration, but in one way he is like many of the others: He is wealthy, with a vast and complicated array of assets.
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci owns property and businesses worth more than $50 million, according to a nancial disclosure report led with the government’s chief ethics agency. The biggest source of his wealth is an ownership stake in an investment fund he founded, Sky- Bridge Capital.
The fund is in the process of being sold to a division of Chinese company HNA Group, a deal that has drawn scrutiny and helped dash Scaramucci’s hopes to move to the White House much earlier in the year. He was turned down as chief liaison to the business community in February.
“In any administration there are always some really extraordinary wealthy individuals, but in this White House, there are so many,” said Don Fox, who stepped down as general counsel at the Of ce of Govern- ment Ethics in 2013. “Their nances, their potential con icts, become exponentially more complicated to manage.”
Scaramucci joins a long list of former Goldman Sachs employees in the administration, including economic adviser Gary Cohn, chief strategist Steve Bannon and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
SkyBridge accounted for a bulk of his income. In the nearly 18 months from the start of last year through June 27, Scaramucci took in about $10 million in salary and other income from the investment fund.
The nancial disclosure also shows Scaramucci earned $88,461 as a contributor to Fox Business Network.
Scaramucci expressed frustration on Thursday with the scrutiny of his personal holdings, and the con ict they may pose.
“I sold SkyBridge. I don’t work there anymore,” he told CNN’s “New Day” on Thursday morning. “There’s residual pro ts that once the sale occurs I am going to receive, but I am not on salary. I do not have a W2 there. What do you want me to tell you?”