Tape 6, August 27, 1998

Lawrence Wollersheim and Jesse Prince

L:	How they avoid producing documents and how they use the corporate shell to perpetrate a fraud on the court. Can you talk a little bit about that?
J:	I've been privy to several meetings beyond MCCS where after the formal relationship with MCCS and different critics came up against Scientology and showed weaknesses in the corporate structure, so many more corporations were set up. You know there's even a more secret corporation now that I'm talking about it than CST. I only heard the name of a couple times, so in case something happens to CST, materials will fall there.
L:	Will go to that location?
J:	Yeah. And that was so secret I only heard it mentioned two times.
L:	So there's some corporation that you've never even heard of, that if something happens to CST -
J:	Right. But what I was saying is after the MCSC and different things occurred, new corporations, new restructuring, and it was all done from the premise of, what if they came after certain things, like what if the IRS comes? They're only going to get a certain bite. Because we've moved corporations, we've moved bank accounts, we've moved everything. If they come after documents, if they come after upper level materials, well we have these corporations set up that will run them around, they'll never get it, we'll never have to produce them, they just won't find them. And the whole premise of those corporations was not to be independent operating corporations, but to be a shell and a buffer against imagined or real threats.
L:	So, for example if a judge ordered documents to be produced by RTC, the practice would be that either RTC would have anticipated they were going to have to produce these documents and would have transferred them to another corporation, or they would transfer them at the time of the judge's order to produce documents to one of the other corporate shells, and then tell the judge that they don't possess those documents or know where they are?
J:	Right, and in the example you just gave, well RTC doesn't have it, then they say CSI has it. Now look at what physically happens. CSI has to be physically brought into the thing, motions, this, that. In the meantime, the clock ticks. Now we get up to the point that, CSI you have to produce this. Well, we don't have them and never said we did. They're someplace else.
L:	And move them again to another corporation.
J:	Or they may never have had them in the first place, and knew where they were all along, but instead of doing that, it's like let's buy the clock.
L:	Do you know of any specific time that the court ordered documents where the corporation moved the documents either in anticipation of the court order or at the court order to another location, and then denied they had the documents. Do you recall any situation when somebody asked for something?
J:	I don't have a real concrete specific about that, but the thing that comes to mind is that probate case, when it had something to do with L. Ron Hubbard and producing certain records and things to do with L. Ron Hubbard. There were definitely some shenanigans going on there.
L:	Moving them to another corporation so they didn't have to produce them for the court?
J:	Right. Or setting up a new corporation to take the burden off this one, so that if anything happens here, well it's not there, it's here.
L:	Gotcha, it's a shell game. So you never know where the assets are, and they're denying that they're in the corporation that the court or whoever is asking for?
J:	Right, and they're doing it in a very intelligent way. They have the best lawyers that have taught them how to do it the most slickest way they possibly can.
L:	You mentioned while we were walking something about the IRS case.
J:	This IRS case, now there was a point in time when the IRS was auditing one of the corporations. The church was providing information, this, that, and the other thing. And the idea that blew the IRS off which made them laugh real hard, is when someone goes to a mission, receipts. They pulled out receipts and just gave them to him, that was just overwhelming. I mean after going through, I don't know, 70,000 receipts - you know meticulously -- they laughed because they stopped looking at a certain point. But getting to the point -
L:	So they overwhelmed the IRS people, the inspectors, by giving them so many receipts that they became befuddled?
J:	Right.
L:	And that was done intentionally to just overwhelm them.
J:	Yeah. It was like a bear trap. It was like, just let them ask us this one thing, and we're going to open this door, and we're going to give them so much shit that they're going to run away. Yeah, they were bear-trapped into that.
L:	And they laughed about -
J:	Laughed and laughed and laughed.
L:	Who was it that laughed?
J:	David Miscavige, Lyman Spurlock, Norman Starkey, Marty, Vicky Aznaran. We were just there, you know. But they had a person inside, they had an inside connection in the IRS. They had an inside connection. They had some attorney or someone, initials all secret, and they intentionally never said names. Some attorney hooked them up to someone he knew, a retired IRS person, who then put them in contact with someone right in the office in Washington IRS, giving them information on what to do.
L:	To get their status.
J:	To get their 501(c)(3).
L:	And would this have been secret if this was a normal legal relationship, would they have kept it secret? Would they have kept this secret if this was appropriate behavior by the IRS agent.
J:	No. Lawrence, I don't mean to be short but God knows that's a rhetorical question. You know exactly why they did it. They did it because they were running an op. They were under orders to get this done. And I'm sure that a lot of palms got greased to get this done. And it would have been done through the attorneys.
L:	The attorneys would have been passing the money to the IRS agent?
J:	Right.
L:	OK. You mentioned MCCS. MCCS was originally a corporate sort-out, reorganization to hide L. Ron Hubbard's control.
J:	Right.
L:	Were there any other projects that were given new names after that, that essentially did the same thing or were similar to that that you knew of?
J:	Nothing with any formal name, but definitely similar itinerants. Specifically with their upper level materials shifting all around - their confidential materials - and then financially things were set up so that, you know it wouldn't even be shocking to me if you found some European corporation actually running the US corporation. It wouldn't be a shock to me. Because the major concern was, it's too hot in the United States. Let's get this in a country where the United States does not have undue influence. And that's a political thing, that changes all the time. I'm not saying what it is today. But I know the whole basis and the reason why that was even gone that way was that so the United States would not have jurisdiction over the majority of Scientology assets.
L:	So you believe there's some shadow corporation in some foreign country that really runs all of -
J:	And I think that Marine Bergotti was one of the persons that was on it.
L:	So if something happened in the US, the foreign corporation would take over the assets and say they really owned them.
J:	Right. See, Marine Bergotti was in the UK, in England, and she would come over like twice a month, fly over with financial statements about foreign interests.
L:	Let me see here. I have this section that you can -
J:	Take home?
L:	Yeah, take home.
[END OF TAPE]