Usury Suspected in “Religious Sect”

Police in Malmö (Sweden) confiscated a mass of documents from a religious sect, in which certain leaders are suspected of usury. The police action came after a tip off that members of the sect planned to destroy financial accounts, receipts and registers of members, and the Malmö investigation is part of an international examination, since several similar cases have emerged confirming the charges. One of the ‘managers’ of the sect was arrested for usury, as was a ‘female priest’ on the same charge. The manager had offered a young man a ‘psycho-course’ to reach a spiritual balance (the tag read £ 3,000 but had a scholarship price reduction to £ 1,500), but the young man’s father stopped the business. The leader of the investigation prosecutor, Bertil Josefsson, also spoke of families paying well over £ 10,000 to the sect in a period of a few years.

Source: “Dagens Nyheter” 10.3.1980.

This piece in D.N. did not mention the actual name of the religious sect in question, but from the nature of the controversy it is clearly Scientology (money, money, money).