Update August 2017 – UniMed UK’s dubious Sound Foundation Community Care Charity and its mystery VAT debt

August 2016 I reported UK’s HM Revenue & Customs landed rewarded our complaints about Universal Medicine’s sham UK charity with a big fat tax bill to Sound Foundation Community Care. Almost £400,000. Update August 2017: Either I misinterpreted the charity’s 2014-15 end of year accounts or UM are telling lies in official documents. According to the charity’s accounts, released in the last week or two, the charity’s VAT debt was incurred as part of the charity’s transfer from trust to an incorporated company. UM says the VAT was refunded. Strangely, in spite of me repeatedly asking the charity’s trustees to explain how a £378k VAT liability appeared on the charity’s accounts, they made no attempt to correct my mistaken interpretation. None. I’m happy to retract my statements from last year and apologize to readers for the misunderstanding. If there was one. Will we receive an explanation for the outstanding anomalies in the accounts? And we’re still left with the problem that literally anyone can register a charity in the UK and take advantage of charity laws for personal financial benefit. 

Universal Medicine Charity Front updates March 2015

Official complaints are ‘hate’. Hysterics and fibs from College of Universal Medicine director, barrister Charles Wilson, for the tax exempt Church of Serge

In the last couple of years, Universal Medicine’s bent charity operations were chastened by regulatory scrutiny. UniMed’s propaganda division continues its offensive to aggressively discredit complainants and whitewash investigation findings. UM and its bottom line might have taken a battering, but charity regulation leaves a great deal to be desired.

Creative accounting – the Sound Foundation Charitable Trust in damage control

The Sound Foundation’s Sound Training Centre – Serge Benhayon’s UK church

Last year, the UK Charity Commission launched an investigation into the Universal Medicine cult’s UK charity front, the Sound Foundation, located at UM headquarters in Frome, Somerset. Particular scrutiny was given to trustee, Simone Benhayon’s conflicts of interest over her use of Sound Foundation facilities, and as a result, the charity was issued with a compliance plan. Their 2012-13 financial statements are a testament to UM’s fundamental dishonesty – revealing glaring anomalies that should have prompted the Commission to shut the tax exempt sham down.

Quacks in the System – Private Eye report on Universal Medicine’s links with the UK NHS

In its February 7 edition, Britain’s top selling current affairs magazine, Private Eye, reported on the NHS promoting the Universal Medicine cult and its sham charity, the Sound Foundation, at a ‘Self Care Forum’ event at UM’s UK headquarters, the Lighthouse in Frome, Somerset.

And while National Health Service employee, Sound Foundation trustee, and former UM UK company director, Jane Keep, managed to dodge the Private Eye magnifying glass, she hasn’t escaped ours.

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.

The Sound Foundation Charity hates charity and music – except for the stuff they’re selling

‘Juzzie Smith, Chris James, Michael Benhayon all put out music that doesn’t need you to like it.’ (EDG Student Notes)

The published object of the Sound Foundation Charitable Trust, founded by musician, Chris James, is to ‘benefit wellbeing through sound’. What that object doesn’t disclose is that the sound is restricted to that of cult leader, Serge Benhayon’s funny little voice – lecturing that music is poison – and the strains of muzak produced by business associate, James, and other cult members. Nor does the Foundation’s publicity mention that it’s a tax exempt front for the nasty Universal Medicine enterprise, which propagates belief that charity is evil on a par with paedophilia.

Update 2: Cult photographer and legal genius, Clayton Lloyd of Flawless Imaging, Goonellabah, issued a copyright infringement notice for the Chris James meme to the left, but did not take legal action when I issued a counter notice – another pathetic and unlawful abuse of DMCA takedowns by the cult in an attempt at censorship. My response to Lloyd is in the comments. 

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.