Greater Ministries defends its mining

A controversial and usually tight-lipped organization works hard to promote its mining operations in Africa.

The Tampa Tribune, December 22, 1998
By Michael Fechter

TAMPA - For years, Tampa's Greater Ministries International offered few details in claiming global interests such as gold and diamond mines.

Now, the organization suspected of running a Ponzi scheme is pitching evidence of its mining program.

The place? Liberia, wracked by aseven-year civil war and crippled by corruption. Its main agent? An IsraeliSouth African ex-convict.

Liberia may hold one of the richest veins of gold and diamonds, but so far, Greater Ministries has not pulled much from the ground.

Documents and interviews suggest the organization has invested at least $1 million to buy equipment, move it to West Africa, and hire South African and Australian geologists. The hired experts report tremendous potential.

Fifteen feet below the ground could be $40 billion in gold, a spokesman told a meeting last month in Lebanon, Pa.

The organization also has shown potential investors a letter, bearing the signature of Liberian Minister of State Ernest Eastman, calling the Ministries Liberia's ``sole agent to monitor and verify all donations and funding raised for humanitarian purposes in our country.''

Details of the operation are posted at http://www.greater-minist ries.com - the organization's page on the World Wide Web.

The Liberia connection is another twist in an already serpentine story.

Federal investigators are trying to determine whether the Ministries' money- doubling promise to the public is a Ponzi scheme. In such a scheme, the money from new investors is used to pay hugereturns promised to previous investors.

Ultimately, money coming in can't keep pace with the promises, and the program collapses.

Based on biblical references, Ministries officials long have told potential participants of international trading and mining operations without specifying locations.

Pennsylvania, Ohio and California governments consider the Ministries' Faith Promises plan to be an unregistered security, and the states have ordered its halt.

Last week, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement arrested Jonathan Strawder, a former Ministries associate whose father and uncle remain active. Strawder created a spinoff program called Sovereign Ministries International that state prosecutors have identified as a Ponzi scheme.

Strawder's attorney said his client would plead guilty to felony charges of grand theft and securities fraud. Strawder may be cooperating with federal investigators.

Pennsylvania, frustrated by three years of seeing its order ignored, won a temporary injunction in October banning financial activity with state residents.

As part of the state's discovery effort to win a permanent injunction, Deputy Attorney General Mark Stewart has asked for specific information about the location of, and production from, 200 gold mines the organization claims to own, along with a full record of its bookkeeping.

If the mines can't be substantiated, ``a logical conclusion would be a Ponzi scheme'' is what's doubling money for participants, Stewart said last month.

Niko Shefer, an Israeli- born South African with a checkered past, called The Tampa Tribune from Johannesburg, South Africa, the day Stewart's comments were published.

Shefer offered to vouch for the Liberian operation and said it may have found gold near the border with Sierra Leone.

``It appears they probably have the largest reserve yet found in West Africa,'' he said. ``It is a massive, massive reserve.''

Shefer served nearly six years of a 14-year prison sentence for bank fraud, and he also was involved in a Liberian mining effort that collapsed a year ago, wiping out investors, South African newspapers report.

Shefer denied wrongdoing in the Amalia Gold venture collapse. He said South Africa's former whites-only government drummed up accusations because he funneled money to opponents.

``I am very well-respected in government circles in South Africa today,'' he declared. ``I wasn't then.''

West African gold markets are active enough to double a company's money in short order, Shefer continued, saying the Tampa organization has been active there for years.

But neither Shefer nor Gerald Payne, founder and president of the Ministries, would say how they got together.

``Niko's a good man,'' Payne said in an interview last month. ``He studied us for a while before he ever got involved with us.''

Payne praised Shefer's influence in Liberia and called him the point man for the Ministries' West African mining and humanitarian efforts spelled out in the letter from the Liberian minister.

The letter means little, said Fletcher Baldwin Jr., a University of Florida law professor and international financial crime expert.

He noted Nigeria, another African country plagued by corruption and financial opportunism, also has provided such letters for ventures that were scams.

Con artists bought the letters from government officials and even rented government homes and offices to impress investors, said Baldwin, who trains law enforcement about financial crime and helps organize annual conferences about money laundering.

A showcase mining operation also fits into past scams, Baldwin said. Con artists bring in investors, show them impressive machinery and introduce them to key government ministers. That creates a temptation to invest more in the hunt for minerals.

``The looking for it makes them more money than the finding,'' Baldwin said.

Liberia, a nationformed by freed slaves from the United States, endured a seven-year civil war that saw at least 200,000 people die and 750,000 flee the country.

Victory by former warlord Charles Taylor ended the fighting in 1996; he was elected president in 1997. He inherited $2 billion in foreign debt and $230 million in domestic debt, according to a U.S. State Department report.

Liberian representatives in Washington have declined comment about Greater Ministries' work in their nation.

The organization insists its overseas effort is legitimate. By definition, it contends, mining is a high-risk venture that can take years to bring profit.

The concessions the organization controls are ``a good target,'' said Morris Viljoen, a South African geologist serving as a consultant to the organization in Liberia. One site, called Bukon Jedeh, appears potentially vast in satellite imagery and other research.

``Clearly there is something there, but by no means is it a proven resource,'' Viljoen said.

Whatever it is, it's the only mining operation the Ministries is willing to discuss in any detail.

When asked for other examples last month, Payne declined.

``Got them all over the world,'' he said. ``I'm not interested in telling you, brother. They're just places [that] if it's known that I'm there, they'd have a hard time.''

Greater Ministries was incorporated in 1992, state records show. Versions of Faith Promises date at least to 1993.

Records from Liberian whistleblowers show the Ministry of National Security viewed the Ministries as ``a rather strange/obscure organization'' when it began importing mining equipment into the country in April.

The Liberian Democratic Future, working out of Smyrna, Ga., published an article in its online magazine, The Perspective, claiming the Ministries bribed government ministers to set up shop.

The article at http://www.mindsprin g.com/~perspective claimed the Ministries avoided paying $340,000 in import duty on equipment by saying it came into Liberia for humanitarian aid.

``Greater Ministries is the only Christian organization actively assisting Liberia with humanitarian assistance,'' Shefer said.

The Office for Humanitarian Affairs at the United Nations in New York lists more than a dozen religious aid programs in Liberia, including Catholic Relief Services of Baltimore.