Abuse of money
Critics point to irregularities in the use of money and highlight the church's role in enriching Moon personally.
[47] The Moon family situation is described as one of "luxury and privilege"
[48] and as "lavish".
[49]
Nansook Hong, who lived with the Moon family for 14 years, describes the Unification Church as "a cash operation" and reports on a number of incidents of questionable movement of money, for example: "The Japanese had no trouble bringing the cash into the United States; they would tell customs agents that they were in America to gamble at Atlantic City. In addition, many businesses run by the church were cash operations, including several Japanese restaurants in New York City. I saw deliveries of cash from church headquarters that went directly into the wall safe in Mrs. Moon's closet."
[49]
In the 1990s, thousands of Japanese elderly people claimed to have been defrauded of their life savings by Moon followers'
spiritual sales. Moon's church was the subject of the largest consumer fraud investigation in Japan's history in 1997 and number of subsequent
court decisions awarded hundreds of millions of yen in judgments, including 37.6 million
yen (
$300,000) to pay two women coerced into donating their assets to the Unification Church
Political activities
Some detractors of the Unification Church have said that its main purpose is to advance Moon's political aspirations, such as the formation of a
one world government.
Critics of the Unification Church have accused the organization of being closely involved with covert
CIA-authored operations against
communism in Korea during the 1960s. The Church is known to have been involved with weapon and munitions manufacturing in Korea since the 1960s, as documented in a 1978
United States Congressional Report on the Unification Church. The explanation given by Korean Unification Church members is that all manufacturers seeking to do business in South Korea were required to supply the military.
Sun Myung Moon's controversial religious and political
Unification Movement, which includes not only the Unification Church but an enormous constellation of civic organizations, including the
Washington Times Foundation, is allied politically with evangelical Christians such as
Jerry Falwell and
Tim LaHaye. Advocates adhering to this point of view have challenged the church's tax-exempt status in the US, arguing that the political activities of church-related groups comprise an impermissible intrusion of the church into political areas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church