Sects are infiltrating the European apparatus
Le Soir/October 27, 1998
By André Riche and Mar Vandermeir
Funding, public promotion, administrative co-operation : the Union, such as other institutions, gets sometimes deceived by sects.
Where will the affairs of frauds surging at the European Commission lead us? The investigations of the Justice Dept in Luxemburg about the Echo affair are well on their way and the Commission is getting increasingly worried as there are new revelations about misappropriated aid to Eastern countries of hundreds of millions of Belgian francs.
The flood came from Echo, "the humanitarian office of the European community" where some fraudulent contracts with the Luxemburg consultant Perrylux have been revealed. The case has been submitted to the prosecutor's office in Luxemburg.
A Marie-Louise Krips worked in Perrylux. She was in charge of the financial management and the creation of Perrylux's branches and off-shore companies in Ireland. Mrs Krips is also an emminent member of the Japanese sect Sukyo Mahikari in which she was also in charge of financial tasks.
A funded castle
The branches of Perrylux, namely Harco, was used to provide the Commission in Brussels with external personnel and the off-shore companies were used to convey the wages through Ireland to evade tax. Perry's turnover with the Commission exceeded 200 million Bef per year, according to its manager, Claude Perry. But higher figures were also mentionned.
Quite disturbing : Harco rented premises to the Wartinsart company, owned by the count of Ansemburg, who is nothing else than the president of the Mahikari sect for Europe. He would have managed a pool of these external workers of the Commission. The affair is even more embarrassing as many current civil servants of the Commission first followed the Perrylux line before being assumed.
Still more surprising : one of the count's castles, in Ansemburg, has become the European centre of the sect. The count sold his castle in 1987. And the restoration of the garden of this castle was directly funded by the Commission in 1993, in the framework of the heritage preservation policy : 60.000 Ecu, 2.4 million of our francs. The use of theses funds has never been controlled. No company has been asked to do the job, according to the Luxemburg government. Only the members of the sect have restored the place for free, and even sometimes paid it out of their own pocket.
The relationship between the European institutions and the sects is even deeper. As it has been noticed in other international institutions, we can fear a real infiltration.
"This is not illegal"
The unit fighting against fraud of the Commission (Uclaf) is worried about it. "You will find members of sects if you take a closer look at the European servants. But it is not illegal : that's all the problem" Indeed, we took a closer look within the administration of the Parliament and the Commission, and we found members of Sukyo Mahikari and transcendental Meditation (which, under innocuous appearances of search for relaxation, is advocating to set up a kind of global government).
The Rosicrucians are also represented. A poster inviting to a conference of this sect was affixed on the information pannels of the European Parliament in Luxemburg, late June and got the official stamp of the administrative information office of the Parliament. The same case was noticed with a poster for the New Acropol sect which shows a clear neonazi ideology. Some representatives of the sects within the institutions are really making a recruitement job.
As far as the Scientology Church is concerned, this sect tried three times to organise conferences in the premises of the European Parliament mistrusting some MP's and without revealing of course their real identity. The organisers have been discovered at the last minute and the meetings were cancelled.
It is surprising that, in front of this situation, the European Parliament, in a 1997 report which was greatly debated and finally very weakened, states that "for now, nothing imposes nor justifies the setting up of a European policy against sects."
This article obtained from Mahikari Under investigation In Europe