SOLET LAKE CITY. Accumulated more than $100 billion collected by believers for charity mormon churchinstead of giving them to charity. “It was a secret fund. Once the money was raised, it was there forever,” former church investment advisor David Nielsen told CBS’s 60 Minutes.

Nielsen passed this information to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2019, when he ran a Mormon investment group for nine years. Nielsen’s complaint report was published in 2019 in the Washington Post after Nielsen’s brother sent a copy to the newspaper. Nielsen, a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the Christian sect calls itself, was recruited by a Mormon investment group through his experience as a Wall Street stockbroker. While working for a church investment group, Nielsen said he watched a Mormon investment firm “masquerade as charity,” evade billions of dollars in taxes, resort to forgery, and mislead other Mormon believers.

Each year, the Church raises about $7 billion from its 17 million members worldwide. Every believer must give her 10% of their income. About 1 billion of these funds were placed in a mutual fund of an investment company and invested normally, as if it were a speculative investment product. However, the profits of the mutual fund were not taxed because they came from a non-profit charitable corporation, as the Mormon Investment Corporation falsely claimed.

The hidden fund was created in 1997 and has grown to $100 billion today, nearly double the total wealth of Harvard University. “I thought we were going to change the world. All we did was replenish the bank account,” Nielsen emphasized in his interview.

Evidence shows that a significant portion of the church’s savings was used to support commercial activities, including a shopping center in Salt Lake City built on church land and to set up an insurance company owned by the sect.

According to Nielsen’s former trustee, the profits were not taxed because they came from a non-profit charitable corporation.

Nielsen resigned in 2019 after a list of Church members involved in shell companies was released. These companies owned billions of dollars of stocks and bonds, all controlled by a Mormon investment firm.

After resigning, Nielsen filed a 74-page complaint with the IRS accusing the Mormon investment firm of violating its non-profit status. Nielsen’s complaint went to the SEC, which found that the Church was trying to hide the size of its investments through shell companies. In February, the Mormon Church paid the IRS a $5 million fine. However, the church dismissed Nielsen’s complaints. Christopher Waddell, the church’s chief executive in charge of its investments, real estate, and philanthropic activities, called Nielsen’s claims “completely false.”

Nielsen’s 60 Minutes interview was his first public statement on the case. “We spent a lot of time with the IRS and SEC. What has been done is very important and should not be crossed out with a small fine,” Nielsen said.

However, according to experts, the chances of a thorough investigation by the federal authorities are low. “The political risk is great. No one wants to investigate the finances of a religious denomination. On the other hand, federal leniency threatens the rule of law if agencies fail to enforce the law,” said former IRS officer Phil Hackney.