Of Moon and Mammon

The Korean evangelist is charged with tax evasion

When it comes to legal troubles, there is nothing much new under the heavens for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the South Korean evangelist who since 1971 has claimed to be acting in the U.S. under direct instructions from Jesus Christ. Parents whose teen-age children have been lured away from home and into Moon's Unification Church have lodged kidnaping charges against the church. New York City tax authorities have won court rulings declaring that religion is not the "primary purpose" of the church and that some of its property in the city is thus not exempt from taxation. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is seeking to deport Moon and his wife Hak Ja Han, contending that she falsified papers to gain status as a permanent resident alien, making her husband's residency illegal too.

Moon's toughest challenge yet from the temporal powers came last week, when a federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted the Korean for tax evasion and conspiracy. The detailed 19-page indictment, presented by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, charges that Moon and one of his chief aides, Takeru Kamiyama, conspired to evade federal income taxes and that Moon filed three false tax returns for the years 1973, 1974 and 1975. Kamiyama helped Moon file the alleged false returns and is accused of submitting false documents and lying to the grand jury.

Specifically, the indictment charges that between March 1973 and December 1975, Moon deposited some $1.6 million, mostly in cash, in bank accounts held solely in his name at the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York. According to the indictment, these accounts earned $112,000 in interest, which Moon failed to report as income. It was taxable, the Government contends, because he used the funds for "personal and business purposes," not for church-related religious expenses. The indictment also states that Moon and Kamiyama in 1973 formed a company, Tong II Enterprises, to import ginseng tea and other items from Korea for sale in the U.S. Moon received $50,000 worth of stock in the corporation, claims the indictment, but he did not report the receipt of the stock as taxable income.

As they have in the face of past legal actions, officials of Moon's church said that he and the church were the victims of Government harassment. Mose Durst, president of the U.S. branch of the church, linked the indictment with "the assassination of President Sadat, the attempted assassinations of President Reagan and the Pope," and charged the Government with "the attempted assassination of the Rev. Mr. Moon and the 3 million members of the Unification Church." He contended that the money in Moon's account had been "held in the Rev. Mr. Moon's name for the benefit of the church" and that all of it had been spent for church purposes. He accused acting U.S. Attorney William M. Tendy, whose office sought the indictment, of "looking for cheap headlines, not justice." Added Durst: "Ronald Reagan said that he was going to get the Government off our backs; he didn't say that he was going to put it around our necks."

As for Moon, he was apparently out of the U.S., perhaps in Europe, and his aides said they were unable to reach him.

If convicted of the conspiracy and tax evasion charges, he could be sentenced to up to 14 years in prison. Alternatively, he could also be deported. The Justice Department did not seem eager last week to launch an international search to bring Moon back to the U.S. so that he could be tried and, if found guilty, expelled.

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