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FRENCH GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS REVEAL FRAUDULENT USE OF FUNDS FOR PLEASURE JAUNTS
CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY CALLS FOR INVESTIGATION INTO FRENCH ANTI-RELIGION OFFICE
Based on government documents revealed today, the Church of Scientology in France is asking the French equivalent of the General Accounting Office to investigate a French government anti-religious office for its fraudulent use of taxpayer funds to pay for pleasure trips by officials to exotic locations over a three-year period. Trips out of the office by MILS officials cost the taxpayer more than $1 million.
Slated for investigation is the French Interministerial Mission to Fight Against Sects (“MILS”), whose head, Alain Vivien, resigned under fire last month. A key point in the controversy is that although MILS has no jurisdiction outside of French territory, financial records show that 16 MILS officials made 88 trips to 43 countries and French dependencies, from 1999 through 2001. The documents were obtained by the Church of Scientology in France under Freedom of Information and released today at a press conference at the Press Club in Paris.
MILS financial records show 22 visits to resort locations including Reunion Island, French Guiana, New Caledonia and the Antilles. On one overseas jaunt paid by taxpayers, MILS president Alain Vivien and diplomat Jean-Ives Defay spent a week in the pricey French Guiana resort town of Cayenne. In total, MILS officials were out of the office for the equivalent of 461 working days in 2000 and 412 in 2001.
Several of these trips by its officials are not mentioned in MILS’ annual reports for the years under investigation.
Vivien resigned last month as MILS president after a disastrous four-year tenure during which international human rights organizations, religious leaders and foreign governments accused him of creating the worst religious intolerance in Western Europe. French officials have admitted privately that Vivien’s conduct caused severe injury to France’s international reputation on human rights issues.
The Church of Scientology has applied to the Council of State, France’s highest court, to have MILS dissolved. Leisa Goodman, Human Rights Director for the Church of Scientology International, said, “The documents released today reveal that Vivien and MILS have been ripping off the taxpayer while lying about their true activities. It now is clear why Vivien and MILS have been falsely accusing others of financial improprieties—they have been covering up their own misappropriation of taxpayer money.”
“Taxpayer monies going to MILS have bought only two things: pleasure jaunts for MILS officials and international condemnation of France for human rights abuses committed by the same officials,” said Ms. Goodman, citing the following:
France has been regularly criticized in U.S. State Department Human Rights Reports and by human rights organizations, as well as at conferences of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe, as the most religiously intolerant nation in Western Europe.
Several U.S. Congressmen who visited France were shocked at the depth of religious discrimination, testified to that effect at congressional hearings and conveyed their concerns to the French government.
France is currently under investigation by the Council of Europe for enacting a discriminatory religion law urged by Vivien.
The four predominant religions in France condemned the law, with the French Protestant Federation President and the head of the French Catholic Bishops’ Conference warning the then Prime Minister that it “threatens fundamental liberties.”
The Vatican has criticized France for religious intolerance.
Vivien scandalized international human rights organizations by attending an symposium in Beijing organized by the Chinese government to justify its persecution of the Falun Gong and Christian House Churches. Vivien also advised the Chinese government on its treatment of religious minorities.
Vivien aroused accusations of paranoia when he publicly accused the U.S. government of being “infiltrated” because the U.S. State Department repeatedly criticized France for religious intolerance.
When the French publication, Le Point, revealed that Vivien’s wife was receiving a salary many times greater than that of her predecessor as head of an anti-religious group of which Vivien was the former president, she resigned in disgrace.
A number of Vivien’s former associates in MILS left in disgust, stating that they found it impossible to work with him.
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