Title "The S Files" [S as in Scientology Logo] [Presenter Dermot Murnaghan (DM henceforth) no relation to any other DM] Tonight we're going to expose serious financial crime in one of the Scientology cult's most successful operations in Britain. We show how they cooked the books, made false statements to obtain bank loans, and changed invoices to fiddle their VAT. [Extract from "Trust" ad] This advert for the Church of Scientology was recently shown on cable TV. It was a major ...

The founder and former head of the Church of Scientology in Lyons was convicted of fraud and involuntary homicide today in the death of a church member who committed suicide after going heavily into debt to pay the sect for counseling sessions. A French tribunal sentenced the defendant, Jean-Jacques Mazier, to serve 18 months in prison, with an additional 18 months suspended, and fined him $100,000. The eight-day trial, in the first week of October, also examined charges of fraud, attempted ...

I refer to the article "Ex-Scientologists testify to suffering" (C-M, Oct 4). Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike have come out in defence of the religious persecution in France. First, the French Government blows up the Rainbow Warrior, then despite world condemnation, they expose the Pacific to atomic fallout. Now we have them deciding that a new religion has become too popular and a threat to their hypocrisy. Scientology may be new and controversial but no one can deny it is the fastest-growing ...

PARIS: The Church of Scientology is battling charges in a Lyon courtroom that it is a manipulative and fraudulent cult that practices false medicine and hounded one of its followers to his death. The case could derail the sect's campaign to be accepted as a mainstream faith in several European countries. Last week, it began beaming satellite television advertisements to Britain, its biggest recruiting ground in Europe, despite not being recognized there as a bona fide religion. The advertisements stress a ...

PARIS, June 19 — Gilbert Bourdin wears a winged crown, calls himself Lord Manarah the Cosmic Messiah, and lives with his followers in the Holy City of Mandar'om on a mountaintop in Provence in southern France. From time to time, loudspeakers blare "ommm" over the compound, a place studded with temples and colossal statues of Buddha, Jesus and Mr. Bourdin himself. The "ommm" may now stop. The sect leader, 73, has sent out faxes announcing that he plans to renounce his ...

PARIS — The president of the French branch of the Church of Scientology and five colleagues have been arrested in a probe of alleged fraud and illegal practice of medicine, court and church officials said Saturday. The president, Daniele Gounord, was arrested Friday in Paris along with the church's treasurer and the head of a church foundation. They were placed under court supervision, but not jailed Three officials of the Scientologists' branch in Lyon were arrested there in the last 10 ...

NEWKIRK, OK – A proposed drug treatment and rehabilitation center which could be in operation on Indian land at the former Chilocco Indian School north of Newkirk by June 15th may be part of a notorious religious cult. Narconon was approved for a 75-bed facility by the State Health Planning Commission in January of this year as part of The Chilocco Development Authority. The projected cost is $400,000 for renovation and the five Indian tribes involved are projected to receive $16,000,000 ...

A History of Controversy As anyone who follows the news knows, Scientology has been involved in a series of controversial cases, many of them involving vengeful church actions against its critics. (More on this below.) Although the church always paints itself as the victim, its critics suggest that Scientology hasn't been persecuted from the outside, but rather is the victim of warped and misplaced priorities inside the church. The critics — and there are more than the church is willing to ...

A former personal secretary to L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology, told a Portland jury Thursday about a secret system Hubbard used in the 1970s for collecting personal income from church organizations. Laurel J. Sullivan, who said she worked closely with Hubbard until he disappeared from public view in 1980, also testified that Hubbard held managerial control over numerous Scientology organizations despite his publicly announced "retirement" from church management in 1966. Contrary to a 1972 church policy ...

THE head of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, whose organisation was described by a High Court judge as 'dangerous, immoral, sinister and corrupt', has been ordered to stay away from Britain. The 74-year-old recluse, himself declared a 'charlatan' by the judge, had hoped to reverse a Home Office ruling which barred him from coming to this country to address his followers at the British headquarters of the sect, Saint Hill, at East Grinstead, Sussex. But when he refused to ...

Eighteen months ago, the U.S.-based Church of Scientology launched a global—and unsuccessful—campaign to prevent publication of a Reader's Digest report called "Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult." The church engaged a detective agency to investigate the author, Digest Senior Editor Eugene H. Methvin. Digest offices in a half-dozen nations were picketed or bombarded with nuisance phone calls. In Denmark, South Africa and Australia, the church sued unsuccessfully to prevent publication. In the months since the article appeared, in May 1980, a ...

On May 14, 1951, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard wrote to the U.S. attorney general to plead for help in fending off a Communist conspiracy, dedicated, he averred, to destroying him. "When, when, when," he wrote, "will we have a roundup?" Rambling through seven single-spaced typewritten pages, the letter was, to all appearances, the heartfelt cry of a troubled man. A successful science fiction writer in the 1940s, L. Ron Hubbard, as he signed himself, had gone on to bigger things. ...

The Church of Scientology, the invention of science fiction writer Ron Hubbard which has caused an unholy uproar around the world in the past, will hold a Canberra inaugural service at Red Hill tomorrow. The Church, established in 1953 by Mr Hubbard after his book 'Dienetics', published in 1950, attracted world-wide interest in the principles of Scientology. More than five million people in 54 countries are understood to have gone through the Scientology processing, a full course of which can cost ...

RON L. Hubbard, the American born founder of the Church of Scientology, who turned Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, into the world headquarters of the movement, was sentenced in his absence to four years in prison and fined 35,000 Francs for fraud by the Paris Criminal Court last week.