College of Universal Medicine charity trouble – 2016 update

Benhayon’s $2.3m Converys Lane building at Wollongbar before renovation

October 2015, the Universal Medicine cult’s Australian charity had its Deductible Gift Recipient status cancelled by the Australian Tax Office. The College doesn’t fulfil the requirement of a charity for the advancing of education. It never did. The College’s building fund has been shut down. Cult leader, Serge Benhayon, has also been prohibited from using the charity’s funds to improve property he owns. Seeing that was the whole point of the sham, what will happen now?

Called to account: ‘not for profit’ groups

This Today Tonight report on Australian charity regulation talks about the new rules for charities to make their audited accounts public. The Hill Song Church alone raised 50 million tax free dollars last year through its charity, but until this year, no one has ever asked them to account for it, and how that money is used to benefit the public. The same can be said for the College of Universal Medicine and cult leader, Serge Benhayon’s fiery property improvement fund.

UK Charity Commission hands compliance plan to the Sound Foundation – charity front for Universal Medicine cult

British Not for Profit Sector Journal, ‘Third Sector’, has reported that the Commission is monitoring the Sound Foundation Charitable Trust and has given the trustees a deadline of May next year to comply with a plan to manage conflicts of interest and issues regarding public benefit.

The regulator received a complaint about the Sound Foundation’s use of charitable property and its relationship with a company that practices ‘esoteric medicine’.

Excerpts from the article are followed by a Who is Who of Universal Medicine UK. (Updated Feb 20, 2014)

The Way of the Livingness – when the Universal Medicine ‘religion’ was denied charity status in the UK

Juan Ford, Ultrapilgrim

Prior to adopting the Sound Foundation charity as the tax exempt front for Universal Medicine’s commercial operations in the UK, cult leader, Serge Benhayon, attempted to obtain charity status for his business by pitching it as a religion called ‘The Way of the Livingness‘. His marketing department sent out an email call to the faithful to provide testimonial on how the Livingness has benefited those around them. In spite of the propaganda, sanity prevailed and the Church of $erge failed to gain tax exemption from the UK Charity Commission. However, his ‘charity’ merely emerged in different packaging, undisclosed.