Sun Myung Moon and the UC claimed -- and still claim to this day -- that the money on which the bank paid interest was not the property of Sun Myung Moon, but of the UC, with Sun Myung Moon holding it in trust for the UC. (The interest wasn't declared as income on Sun Myung Moon's tax return; the government claimed that it should have been; the amount of interest in question was several thousand dollars under $10,000; the government never issues criminal charges for an amount under $10,000; in any case, an opportunity for paying the assessed amount plus a fine is always given before criminal indictments are made, but that wasn't done in this case. The evidence points toward the government wanting something to "get" Sun Myung Moon on, and stooping toward an improper prosecution on improper grounds to do so.) So if Sun Myung Moon's and the UC's claim was/is true, there were no tax misdeeds in the Sun Myung Moon case. Given that it is a standard practice for clergymen to hold money in bank accounts in their names, when this money is actually church property and not the private property of the minister, this claim of Sun Myung Moon and the UC is not unusual, and the presumption, absent definitive evidence ot the contrary, should be that their claim is correct.

Whether there was a cover-up can also be disputed. It's true that backdated documents (loan agreements) were created. The UC claims that these documents were created after the fact to give evidence of what actually occurred (that money was given as loans, but that there were no formal documents made at the time the loans were granted). Suppose you know and trust me well enough to lend me $10,000 for five years, and we do it simply on a handshake. Three years later on, for whatever reason, we decide that there should be a formal loan agreement, so we draw one up and backdate it for the time you actually gave me the money. Have we done a cover-up, or anything else wrong? I don't think so.

So the notion that there were "tax misdeeds" in Sun Myung Moon's case is definitely not proven, and the evidence points toward Sun Myung Moon and the UC being correct. (See Sherwood's book Inquisition for a detailed account of all this.) Having investigated the case myself, I'm convinced that the claims made by Sun Myung Moon and the UC about this money were correct.

Lloyd Eby

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