Sarma Speaks: A ‘Bad Vegan’ Exclusive

A Little Bit Culty

Episode Eleven - Sarma Speaks: A ‘Bad Vegan’ Exclusive

March 21, 2022

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" ... Melngailis seemed to be living the charmed life of a glamorous celebrity chef and foodie media darling. Her fancy pants raw food restaurant, Pure Food & Wine was adored by the glitterati, and her camera-ready image as the ‘Queen of Veganism,’ seemed poised to take her global. Then, circa 2015, Sarma vanished like a thief in the night. Literally. She disappeared, leaving a whole crowd of angry employees, landlords, and investors in the dust. Under investigation for a heaping bowl of fraud accusations, labor law violations, and a hefty tab of unpaid wages, with 2 million dollars drained from her restaurant accounts: Sarma the Celebrity Chef became Sarma the Runaway Fugitive overnight.How does someone go from being a Foodie ‘It Girl’ to the “vegan Bernie Madoff” ? It might have a little bit to do with a smooth operator who slid into her DMs and used next-level coercive control tactics to take over her life. Sarma’s story is chronicled in the Netflix true crime series “Bad Vegan”, by the producers of Tiger King, and she’s currently at work on her highly-anticipated memoir."

https://www.alittlebitculty.com/season-3/blog-post-title-one-kldc6-en2f4-3cbje-bc9ak-ebcw6-e8fyn-xbkyn-sswxy-t3dtz-g6r8x-79mp2

Staff turn to HRC to save them from 'cult-like' course

Allegations workshop includes being sworn at, sexual degradation, physical abuse and sleep deprivation

NIVASHNI NAIR AND YASANTHA NAIDOO

Times Live SA

February 27, 2022

Employees of a direct-marketing insurance company in Durban have turned to the South African Human Rights Commission (HRC) to save them from a leadership course in which they say they will be sworn at, belittled  and made to cross-dress and sing nursery rhymes — or face being fired.

Employees of The Unlimited said the Turning Point and Spring Joy course — which costs R25,000 a head — will be held over five days in Gauteng next month. During this time their cellphones will be confiscated and they will be barred from communicating with their families, will have limited bathroom breaks and will have to endure “tough and challenging” role-playing games and activities that run until the early hours of the morning.

But the company, which sells data, sim cards and medical insurance, has defended the mandatory workshops as part of its commitment to “building future leaders”.

In a letter to the HRC from about a dozen people who wished to remain anonymous for fear of being fired, employees voiced concern about the course content after hearing about it from colleagues and former colleagues. The employees have asked the commission to investigate the company for ordering them to go on the course or face  dismissal. 

“They are forcing employees to participate in controversial transformational workshops that have nothing to do with workplace skills, and it is either you do it or you get dismissed,” staff say in the letter. “What is making things worse is the fact that these courses have controversial reviews and there are allegations of brainwashing, verbal and physical abuse, sleep deprivation and being like a cult.” 

The Sunday Times spoke to three current and former employees who said the courses “break you down to build you up” and are known to trigger people psychologically. This is harmful to employee wellness, they said. 

A former employee who left the company a few years ago after attending a course run by transformation facilitator Steven Gullan, said it involves participants swearing at each other, parading in bikinis, sexual degradation and a naming ceremony during which a participant was rocked while being serenaded by fellow participants.

The employee said the course — based on neurolinguistic programming — broke her and led to her having a stroke after high blood pressure and anxiety. 

“For months afterwards, I would break down if I heard someone say 'The Unlimited' or heard it on television. Their whole corporate ethos is aimed at manipulation and control. They had pins and scarves as badges of honour, a different way of speaking, and people couldn't just walk, they had to walk with purpose.”

She said people are afraid to speak out because they have been headhunted and relocated to Durban, paid very well and become financially dependent.

The Unlimited CEO Andrew Wood said he is “concerned” that staff complained about having to go on the workshop when it had been  “deliberately explained” to them during their recruitment process.

He said staff were told that the context of the course was in keeping with a corporate culture aimed at developing leaders, though employees were not given the specifics of what it entailed.

“I have been on the course twice, once mandatory and the second time voluntarily. In my experience it is tough and challenging and not for everyone but I am not aware of the cross-dressing and the swearing. There have been about 1,000 employees who have gone on this course and we don’t know of anyone who has been negatively impacted from a psychological point of view,” said Wood. 

Wood said he was aware that one woman said she had bipolar disorder and was excused from attending.

He said staff were “reminded about the upcoming course and the contractual obligations” in terms of compulsory attendance during a routine weekly engagement session recently.

“Two people resigned because we are effectively enforcing the contractual agreement. We didn't force them to resign, they chose to leave.”

IN NUMBERS

R25 000 - the cost of the course, which was introduced about 15 years ago by company founder

Iain Buchan

1,000 - the approximate number of staff who

have attended the mandatory courses over the past

10 years

Wood said the course is run by Royee Banai, whose late father, medical doctor Baruch Banai, founded the Insight Centre in Gauteng as a life coach.

The website is inactive and efforts to contact Banai via a contact number listed under the Insight Centre, as well as through a facilitator, Mkhuseli Ciyo, who works with him and Wood, were unsuccessful.

Specific questions about the course content, allegations of abuse, sleep deprivation and employees' concerns about being ordered to attend the course were not answered by Banai or Ciyo.

Wood said staff will pay 20% of the course fee as part of a new model because there does not seem to be “commitment” from staff.

HRC KwaZulu-Natal head Lloyd Lotz confirmed receipt of the complaint and said it would be assessed.

Clinical psychologist Nazia Iram Osman said for any therapeutic intervention to be effective or “transformational”, it has to have the client’s informed consent.

https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-02-27-stpg3-staff-turn-to-hrc-to-save-them-from-cult-like-course/

As Catholic order fought sex abuse claims, secret trusts devoted to it poured millions into American rental properties

Leaked files reveal nearly $300 million stashed overseas for the Legion of Christ in wake of Vatican investigation. Millions were invested with a corporate landlord that evicted struggling U.S. tenants during pandemic.

Spencer Woodman
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
October 5, 2021

Key Findings

• Leaked records reveal a set of secret New Zealand trusts holding nearly $300 million in assets devoted to the Legion of Christ, Roman Catholic order caught in an international pedophilia scandal.
• As the secret trusts' investments expanded, victims of sexual abuse by Legion priests were seeking financial compensation from the order through lawsuits and through a commission overseen by the Vatican.
• In response to questions about whether the Legion disclosed the trusts to the Vatican, the order told ICIJ that "religious institutes do not have an obligation to send detailed information to the Vatican regarding their internal financial decisions."
• The trusts used a shell company to invest heavily in U.S. rental properties, including in apartment complexes where tenants were evicted during the coronavirus eviction moratorium.

In January, Carlos Lomena, a truck driver in suburban Miami who lost his job during the coronavirus pandemic, begged a judge to stop his landlord from evicting him.

The 37-year-old Lomena hoped to get a fair shake in court. He'd emigrated from Venezuela after high school with a sense that the U.S. had a more just legal system.

In a letter to the Florida judge, he pointed to a recent extension of the nationwide moratorium on evictions during the coronavirus outbreak and asked for more time to pay his overdue rent.

"I do not have a place to go," Lomena wrote, "nor the money to move into a new apartment."

His landlord — a holding company formed by real estate firms in Miami and Iowa — wasn't moved by his pleas; it had investors to satisfy. The company pressed the court to evict him and, in early February, the judge ruled that Lomena hadn't filed the right form to prevent his eviction. Within days, during the height of the pandemic, the Broward County Sheriff's Office posted a large notice in bold red letters on his door ordering Lomena to vacate his home within 24 hours or be arrested for trespassing.

Lomena isn't alone.

Tenants across the country have faced aggressive tactics — including evictions during the pandemic — from a growing number of massive corporate landlords that draw on pools of money from wealthy investors around the world.

A trove of leaked documents reviewed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and 150 media partners provide an unprecedented view of global financial maneuvers that turn rent payments into big profits that are often hidden in accounts owned by shell companies controlled by anonymous investors.

The investors revealed in the leaked documents include offshore trusts holding hundreds of millions of dollars for the Legion of Christ, a wealthy Roman Catholic order disgraced by an international pedophilia scandal.

The confidential records show that the trusts became a secret partner in the ownership structure of Lomena's apartment complex, working with the landlord to invest $2 million in the complex in 2015. The trusts invested millions more in other modest residential buildings in Florida, Texas, Iowa, Indiana and Illinois.

Soon after the Vatican announced in 2010 that it would seize the operations of the troubled order and launch a new investigation, high-profile Legion of Christ operatives began quietly setting up one of a trio of New Zealand trusts designed to hold money for the Legion, according to leaked records.

Two of these trusts, formed shortly after, secretly moved millions of dollars around the world. This included more than $14 million funneled into investments in apartment complexes that Pensam Capital, the firm that owned Lomena's building, was acquiring across the United States. In comments to ICIJ, Pensam said it has not received information indicating it has received investments from the Legion.

These two trusts would come to hold nearly $300 million in assets devoted to the Legion of Christ, according to leaked records, at a time when victims of sexual abuse by its priests were seeking financial compensation from the order through lawsuits and through a commission overseen by the Vatican.

In response to questions about whether the Legion disclosed the trusts to the Vatican, the order told ICIJ that "religious institutes do not have an obligation to send detailed information to the Vatican regarding their internal financial decisions or organization."

In statements to ICIJ, the Legion acknowledged it had set up one of the three trusts, but distanced itself from the other two, which held the majority of the funds designated for the Legion. The Legion said it had no knowledge of the other two trusts' operations. The two trusts were funded by scions of a prominent industrialist family in Mexico, including Father Luis Garza Medina, one of the Legion's top leaders. A spokesperson responding to ICIJ's questions for Father Garza said that Garza has no control over the trusts.

A review of leaked documents by ICIJ shows deep connections to the Legion in all three trusts, which share the same New Zealand address and have the same trustees managing them.

The spokesperson for Garza said the secret trusts were strictly charitable and devoted to the support of elderly priests and other Catholic causes, and that the trusts have only made charitable distributions.

The leaked documents are part of the Pandora Papers, the millions of secret files at the heart of a global investigation by ICIJ and its media partners, including the BBC, the Washington Post, L'Espresso in Italy, El Pais in Spain and the Mexican publications Quinto Elemento Lab and Proceso. The records involving the Legion of Christ come from Asiaciti Trust, a Singapore-based corporate services provider that helped administer the New Zealand trusts.

The trove contains large amounts of data on various wealthy investors who used offshore entities to channel money into real estate.

They are part of a growing class of international investors in real estate ventures that often use hardball tactics to maximize the rate of return from properties occupied by low- and mid-income renters.

Dozens of current and former tenants at Pensam-owned buildings interviewed for this article described problems with their units, including flooding, mold or mildew, broken appliances and dangerous elevators. Pensam routinely partners with Iowa-based BH Management Services, which takes on the day-to-day administration of its buildings.

A review of more than 100 court cases in Florida showed that the property managers added steep penalties on late rental payments and pursued rapid evictions of tenants unable to pay their rent. Tenants said customer service was difficult to reach and eviction notices appeared to be a go-to tool to manage tenants. In a statement, BH Management said it coordinates rent collection "under strict adherence of lease agreements and the law, including the CDC order on evictions."

The kids asked: 'How are we going to tell people we live in a hotel?' The whole thing is devastating for a family.— Collette Northrop

The high returns that financial firms promise their wealthy investors inevitably lead to vulnerable renters being squeezed, according to Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit organization that monitors private equity firms and other large investors.

"This is the problem of growing global wealth inequality crystallized in one industry," Baker said.

In 2013, Pensam and BH Management evicted Collette Northrop and her children from a Dunedin, Florida, apartment after the family missed an $895 payment, according to court records. Just months before, the trusts holding money for the Legion of Christ had secretly invested at least $1 million toward Pensam's purchase of the apartment complex. Northrop said that the family moved into a motel and that her children switched to a new middle school. "We were homeless at that point," Northrop said. "The kids asked: 'How are we going to tell people we live in a hotel?' The whole thing is devastating for a family."
'The millionaires of Christ'

In 1941, a charismatic Mexican priest named Marcial Maciel founded the Legion of Christ, a Catholic order that would become known for its intense focus on courting wealthy patrons. Some would come to call Maciel's order "los millonarios de Cristo" — "the millionaires of Christ."

Over six decades, a cult of personality grew up around the group's founder. Members of the Legion were taught that Maciel was a "living saint." His creation grew and became a global force as it cultivated ties to Vatican officials, very wealthy Catholics and conservative Republican luminaries in the U.S. such as Domino's Pizza founder Tom Monaghan, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania.

Maciel became "the greatest fund-raiser of the modern church" — and "its greatest criminal," according to Jason Berry, an investigative reporter who delved deeply into the Legion and its leader.

In early 1997, Berry and a reporter at the Hartford Courant wrote a front-page story that exposed Maciel's decades of sexual predation, reporting that nine men had come forward to accuse him of sexually abusing them when they were boys or young men training to be priests.

Before the story was published, Berry later reported, one of Maciel's confidants, the Rev. Luis Garza, "traveled to Legion houses in several countries to warn of the forthcoming article, claiming it would be based on lies and telling Legionaries … not to read the report should they see a copy."

In 2006, after being plagued for years by accusations against the Legion's founder, the Vatican investigated nearly 100 abuse allegations against Maciel and removed him from ministry with an order that he adopt a "life of prayer and penitence."

When Macial died in 2008, the scandal didn't die with him. Revelations that he'd fathered several children with different women brought more negative attention to the Legion of Christ. The Legion was increasingly viewed as a liability to the Vatican.

Amid the continuing scrutiny, much of the order's leadership passed to Garza, known as an architect of its complex finances. Garza came from the family that has controlled Mexico's Alfa conglomerate for decades. Garza joined the Legion after graduating from Stanford University, and he quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Maciel's most trusted lieutenants.

On May 1, 2010, the Vatican announced that it would seize control of the Legion's operations, the church's most dramatic action against a Catholic order during the global abuse scandal. The Vatican would examine the Legion's finances and possible sex crimes and establish a commission to compensate its victims.

The following month, one of Maciel's sons filed a high-profile lawsuit against the Legion, alleging that the order had knowingly allowed Maciel to abuse him and other children.

In July 2010 — two days before the Vatican-appointed official took the reins of reforming the Legion — Luis Garza quietly helped to establish the first of the three secretive trusts in New Zealand that would hold money for the Legion.

The Vatican did not directly respond to questions about the trusts, but said that its effort to reform the Legion was mostly focused on issues around its founder and its structure.

During its investigation, the Vatican appeared to be operating on the belief that the Legion was low on money. The Vatican overseer of the Legion, Cardinal Valasio De Paolis, wrote in September 2011 that the Legion's financial situation was "serious and challenging" and that some victims were asking for "enormous sums that the Legion absolutely cannot afford," according to a 2014 book by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi based on leaked Vatican sex abuse records.

At the time the trusts were established, New Zealand was a popular destination for people seeking to hide money offshore using trusts. The trusts holding money for the Legion maintained four Swiss bank accounts, including one at a Geneva-based bank, Lombard Odier, that the U.S. Justice Department later found had helped American clients conceal assets from U.S. tax authorities.

Garza's sister, Roberta Garza, who left the Legion's lay branch after high school, told ICIJ that historically the Legion used offshore structures to divert religious and charitable money to more self-serving purposes, including Maciel's lavish lifestyle, his secret children and his drug habits. "A lot of their money was held outside the Legion by their financiers, by people with power of attorney who are completely faithful to the Legion," Roberta Garza said. "So you're never going to find it."

"We are not aware on what bases Roberta Garza makes her affirmations," Father Aaron Smith, a spokesperson for the Legion said in response. "We have found no proof of use of offshore structures to divert religious and charitable money from the Congregation to finance what we know about Maciel'́s double life."

As the New Zealand trusts quietly built their investment portfolios, the Legion faced legal threats on multiple fronts.

In civil litigation that began in 2011, Luis Garza and other Legion members were accused of defrauding an elderly Catholic woman out of $60 million in charitable donations to the order. According to The Associated Press, Garza was one of the Legion leaders responsible for distributing money from the woman's trusts, although he was not a defendant in the case. The Legion at the time said that it did not unduly influence the widow. The case was later dismissed by a Rhode Island judge who said the woman's niece did not have standing to sue.

Police in Milan opened a criminal investigation in 2013 into whether senior Legion clergymen offered a bribe to induce an Italian sexual abuse victim to recant testimony he had given prosecutors. Four Legion members were charged with attempted extortion and obstruction of justice. The case is pending.

Garza was himself accused of child molestation in a 2016 suit that attracted media attention, but it was withdrawn in 2019. At the time, a spokesperson for the Legion said Garza "categorically denies his involvement in this or any other abuse." The Legion's own internal investigation cleared Garza. In May, lawyers for the alleged victim told L'Espresso, an ICIJ partner in Italy, that they are exploring ways to refile the suit.

In November 2017, L'Espresso published an investigation into a portion of the Legion's offshore finances, revealing that $300 million had moved through a Legion-owned company in Bermuda more than a decade before. Although the New Zealand trusts were active when this information became public, they remained a well-kept secret. Responding in 2017 to disclosures of its financial activities in Bermuda and other tax havens, the Legion declared that it "does not own offshore companies, nor does it own resources in offshore companies."

The order characterized the offshore accounts as a relic of Maciel's bygone reign.

In February 2020, Pope Francis told the Legion that the order had been tainted by the cult of personality surrounding its founder, and, even after a decade of heightened supervision from the Vatican, the order was still not fully reformed.
'Spiritual projects'

Pensam Capital is part of a wave of new investment firms that have plowed billions of dollars into the global real estate market in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis — a trend that has raised fears of a financial industry takeover of housing.

In 2017, a United Nations-backed research paper warned that the "expanding role and unprecedented dominance of financial markets and corporations in the housing sector" were contributing to increases in poverty, evictions and homelessness around the world.

On its website, Pensam Capital boasts of investing more than $3.5 billion in rental properties since 2009, and advertises, among its services, "direct investments" in real estate.

Although Pensam focuses on apartment rentals, other investment firms, including some private equity investors, dramatically increased purchases of single-family houses after 2008. Among these firms are some of the largest and best-known, such as Blackstone and Colony Capital. Blackstone has bought more than 80,000 single-family homes across the country over the past decade.

One of the biggest players in single-family homes is Pretium Partners, a private equity firm that quickly rose to prominence in the field after its founding in 2012, and shot past many of its rivals to become one of the largest owners of single-family homes in America. Often known as Progress Residential, the firm owns more than 55,000 houses across the country.

The Pandora Papers include records revealing the complex offshore workings of Pretium's original investment fund. A U.S. House committee is investigating the many evictions of Pretium tenants during the pandemic. In response to questions from ICIJ, Pretium said that it "always complied with the CDC moratorium" and that "no resident covered by a CDC declaration has ever been evicted from Pretium's homes for non-payment of rent."

While Pensam Capital has kept a lower profile than Pretium, both companies attracted investors who used offshore financial arrangements.

As scandal swirled around the Legion of Christ, assets from two of the New Zealand trusts were being shuttled around the world and into various U.S. rental properties.

Through Pensam Capital, the trusts invested in at least eight apartment complexes in Florida, Texas, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. In leaked documents obtained by ICIJ, Pensam pegged its target rate of return at about 15% annually from its rental properties, a yield that would comfortably outpace normal stock market returns.

The trusts made dozens of other investments, including stakes in a chain of rehab facilities, a Texas-based medical device company and a Mexican nutritional supplements company.

The structure the trusts used to make investments appears designed both for secrecy and to allow the Legion to legally distance itself from the vast stores of money.

"Trusts allow you to enjoy things when it's the right time but not have the downsides of technically owning the money," Andres Knobel, a researcher at the Tax Justice Network who has studied trusts extensively, told ICIJ. "On paper, they can say: 'I have nothing to do with this.'"

The New Zealand trusts were not required to make public filings that would link them to Legion leaders.

Leaked Asiaciti documents from 2004 to 2017 describe New Zealand as "providing advantages of an established offshore jurisdiction" without the stigma of a well-known tax haven. The documents claim that the New Zealand trusts do not have to be registered with any government entity in New Zealand and that they are ideal for those seeking to protect their assets from creditors and tax collectors. (In 2017, after ICIJ reporting partners revealed New Zealand as a popular destination for wealthy people to hide their assets, the country strengthened its regulation of trusts.)

To carry out investments in the U.S. the New Zealand trusts used a Delaware shell company called Lowndes Holdings Inc. Lowndes' public filings contain no trace of its relationship to the trusts or the Legion.

The Legion and its leaders were under no sanctions and were involved in no criminal proceedings in the U.S. But the investments still suggest how easy it is to plow millions of dollars into U.S. real estate while keeping a low profile. Experts blame lax federal regulation for permitting secrecy that makes U.S. real estate investment appealing for those seeking to hide money.

Pensam said in a statement that it "adheres to a comprehensive 'know your customer' compliance program when analyzing whether to accept a new investor or continue a relationship with an existing investor." It said that it "did not, and has not, received any information that would lead Pensam to believe that any of its investors have been or are currently governed or managed by the Legion of Christ."

In comments to ICIJ, the Legion acknowledged that it had created one of the three trusts — the Retirement and Medical Charitable Trust — in order to receive donations that would fund the lives of elderly priests. The Legion said it had no knowledge of the operations or the terms of the two trusts holding most of the money — the AlfaOmega Trust and Salus Trust. These two trusts hold hundreds of millions in assets devoted to the Retirement and Medical Charitable Trust. The two trusts were separately funded by Garza and two of his siblings, and a spokesperson said the Garzas have no control over the trusts.

A Legion spokesperson said it would be wrong to "attribute any decisions, investments, or activities" of the two trusts to the Legion. But the spokesperson acknowledged that the Legion sometimes requested "donations" from the two trusts, "which are free to grant or deny these requests."

Yet a review of numerous leaked records shows that all three trusts are extensively linked to the highest levels of the Legion.

Prominent Legion officials help to govern all three trusts. The three trusts have the same addresses, the same trustees, are administered by the same trust company, and have accounts at the same Swiss banks. A Legion financial operative named Alejandro Páez Aragón is the AlfaOmega and Salus trusts' "protector" — a position giving him extensive influence over the trusts. Around the time the trusts were established, Páez Aragón was the director of the Legion's foremost private investment vehicle, Grupo Integer. Páez Aragón also is Luis Garza's brother-in-law.

In a leaked 2016 memo, a New Zealand tax lawyer analyzing the three trusts called the AlfaOmega and Salus trusts "essentially conduits to the" Retirement and Medical Charitable Trust.

The trusts' managers hoped they would qualify as purely "charitable or religious" for the purposes of gaining benefits of New Zealand's tax treaty with the U.S. But the lawyer's memo warned that the AlfaOmega and Salus trusts had "no express prohibition on the appointment of non-charitable beneficiaries."

The lawyer recommended restricting the trusts to strictly charitable purposes by removing the possibility of specific individuals becoming beneficiaries. It is unclear whether this change was ever made.

In statements to ICIJ, a spokesperson for the AlfaOmega and Salus trusts said that the trusts were intended to "help elderly priests and consecrated individuals as well as supporting social, charitable, and spiritual projects based on Catholic teachings." The charitable giving for elderly members includes "providing funding for living expenses such as accommodation, food, and medical needs," the spokesperson said, adding that the trusts had opened Swiss bank accounts because "the financial industry in that country is well advanced, and allows for open investment architecture, where banks have access to many financial products, and have the competence to understand and recommend them."

A spokesperson for the trusts said that the trusts were formed in New Zealand because the country is "professional, reliable, cooperative and serious," and said that the trusts remained there after the new regulations to "take advantage of the country's stricter legal and transparency laws rather than move to a country with less stringent laws."

The spokesperson said the trusts can change their intended recipients at any time.

In an undated filing to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service obtained by ICIJ, the Retirement and Medical Charitable Trust claims a tax exemption as a purely charitable or religious organization.

A spokesperson responding to questions for Garza said that "the trusts have provided an average of $1.0 million annually to provide food, housing and healthcare to a large number of retired and aging priests, nuns, and consecrated individuals."
'Living in a nightmare'

In early September 2015, the New Zealand trusts used Lowndes Holdings to invest $2 million in the complex where Carlos Lomena would live in Plantation, Florida. According to its website, Pensam would add value to its investment by upgrading the apartments' exteriors, changing the landscaping and making other improvements. Pensam told ICIJ that it invested millions in renovations to the complex.

The complex was legally owned by a holding company called PBH Plantation LLC — an apparent nod to the partnership between Pensam Capital and BH Management.

ICIJ visited the buildings in late June, just after Pensam reportedly sold the complex for $46 million to a Miami-based property management company.

The facades of the four-story buildings are attractive, with modern glass handrails on apartment balconies and earthy colors that go well with the tropical landscaping. Beyond the facades, outdoor walkways show signs of water damage and mildew covers apartment doors. A large eviction notice lingered on the door of a former resident who had been expelled in May.

Tenants who rented from PBH Plantation said management was quick to hit them with painful late fees.

"If you're three days past rent day, you get a $100 late fee. If you're three days past that, you get a letter talking about eviction," said a former PBH Plantation renter, who left the apartment complex because of a rent increase and who asked to remain anonymous.

Earl Walker, a renter in the Plantation complex, said PBH Plantation took months to address water damage and leaks in his unit — but was quick to punish him when he paid rent slightly past the three-day grace period. "I had a leak here, and they took months to come and fix this. But I'm late by a couple hours, and they're sticking to their guns this way," Walker said of the late fee. "That's not really fair."

Mariya Vazhelyuk, a mother of two, said that her third-floor apartment has had extensive leaking during rainstorms and that her children developed breathing problems during their first months there — a reaction, she believes, to mold or mildew. She said that several months before Pensam sold the building, an elevator door closed on a stroller with one of her children in it. The child was unharmed, she said, but the stroller was pinned between the doors.

According to public records, Broward County inspectors found 40 violations involving the complex's three elevators between February 2018 and April 2021, including expired permits, broken mechanisms to keep elevator doors from opening between floors, broken emergency phones and alarms, and expired fire extinguishers.

In August 2019, the city of Plantation issued a citation for "excessive mildew" on the stairs and walkways throughout the complex, as well as an "odor nuisance" from garbage.

Several former tenants at Pensam-owned buildings complained about court costs and other fees attached to eviction proceedings.

A 2017 eviction filing from one of Pensam's Florida apartment complexes, for example, showed the firm's property manager charged a renter, who owed $1,960 in back rent, an additional $662 in attorneys' fees and court costs, $203 in late fees and about $175 in "other charges" — bringing the total to $3,000.02. This building was also overseen by BH Management.

"These companies see late fees and court fees as an important way to increase their revenue," Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, told ICIJ. "This process is meant to extract the most money from the poorest tenants."

What bothers Lomena most about his ordeal was PBH Plantation's unwillingness to work with him, even during the pandemic eviction moratorium. In his January letter to the judge, Lomena noted that he had just started a new job, although he had not yet received his first paycheck.

The eviction proceedings dragged on for weeks, during which Lomena sold nearly all of his furniture on Facebook Marketplace — so that he'd be able to leave on short notice if he lost his case. "I sold everything," Lomena said. "Being there was like living in a nightmare."

A spokesperson for BH Management Services said it is "responsible for coordinating rent collection from tenants, which we do under strict adherence of lease agreements and the law, including the CDC order on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Lomena had called lawyers for help, he said, but none offered a rate he could afford. So he attempted to fight the case himself. Because he had not filed the necessary federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention form for eviction protection — he had only invoked the CDC moratorium in his letter to the court — the judge approved the eviction on Feb. 4.

In a statement to ICIJ, Pensam said that BH Management was "committed to not removing any resident for the non-payment of rent when a valid CDC declaration was submitted." Pensam said that "late fees and legal fees are stated in every lease agreement" and "are consistent with industry standards, and comply with federal, state, and local laws."

A week after the judge's ruling, Lomena came home to two eviction notices from the sheriff's office on his front door. Lomena hustled to find a place to live, and rented a room for $700 a month in the house of an elderly woman.

Lomena said his new landlord allows him to use the kitchen only on Sundays, when he cooks food for the rest of the week. He said he struck a deal with PBH Plantation to pay off his debt — a mix of rent, late fees, attorneys' fees and other charges — in installments of about $300 a month.

Lomena said he hopes to move into his own apartment again but is concerned that no landlord will take him because of his eviction — a major long-term consequence of eviction, according to housing advocates.

"I don't feel like I can keep afloat here," Lomena said. "I want to move forward, save some money, and be happy."

Contributors: Mathieu Tourliere, Andrea Cardenas, Georgina Zerega, Leo Sisti, Mike Hudson, Dean Starkman, Kathryn Kranhold, Margot Gibbs, Brenda Medina, Agustin Armendariz, Emilia Diaz-Struck.

https://www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/legion-of-christ-us-property-evictions-offshore/

I Worked at a Labor Union. My Bosses Ran It Like a Cult.

They cared about workers—just not their own.

Ellen as Told to Michael Mechanic
Mother Jones
September 2021

One might hope and expect that a union, of all employers, would nurture a healthy workplace culture for its staff. But that’s not necessarily the case, as Ellen (a pseudonym) discovered after accepting a job with a California union during the late 1990s.

When I was in my late 20s, I took a research position with a local labor union. The union’s mission was to help low-wage service workers, including cleaners and food servers, organize for better working conditions and dignity on the job. The only problem was, our bosses didn’t care about the dignity of their own workers.

In some ways it was the best job I’ve ever had: meaningful, challenging, lots of great people. The union was badass. The workers we represented were loyal and devoted. They were militant when called upon to strike or boycott employers. Prevailing local wages and benefits for their jobs were among the best in the country. The union would run a precision operation of buses from job sites to the union hall for votes or grassroots mobilizations, with participation rates exceeding 90 percent. Our campaigns were no joke.

But the leadership ran the place like a cult. They separated us from our families and blurred the lines between work and not work.

Early on, I traveled out of state to meet other union staff and get trained. They inexplicably took me to a funeral. It was tragic. A researcher I didn’t yet know had lost a baby to sudden infant death syndrome. I found myself crying in church in front of an open casket—it was a Catholic service and the poor baby was in a frilly white gown. I was meeting new people while offering condolences. Then I was whisked back to the office to finish the work day. Talk about whiplash.

We union staffers were fully expected to sacrifice our personal lives and put in long hours to help the working class rise up.

I soon realized the trip was more than a one-off. We union staffers were fully expected to sacrifice our personal lives and put in long hours, including most nights and weekends, to help the working class rise up.

One time, after I called in sick, a supervisor still wanted me on a spontaneous conference call. That same guy called me at home months later to ask me to move to a less-union-friendly city to work on an organizing campaign. I had just bought a house with my boyfriend. The deep roots I was putting down allowed me to dodge that bullet. But this boss made clear I would have to work harder to be considered “down” for class struggle. I wasn’t worthy!

The sacrifices seemed reasonable at first to the naive younger me. I walked picket lines at lunch time and at night, and met with co-workers for strategy sessions or went door-knocking for political campaigns on weekends. We were expected to pay union dues to show solidarity with the workers, even though we weren’t technically members.

I was getting more accustomed to the union’s cultlike personality, but I was still taken aback when not one but two male staffers hit on me at work. One of them would softly chant under his breath, “You and me, you and me,” until I finally worked up the guts to tell him there was no “you” with me.

Later a married man with influence over my work awkwardly suggested that we have an affair. Really? We worked in a place dedicated to shifting the lopsided power dynamic between bosses and workers. But I knew that telling the leadership I was being propositioned by men who had already proved their worth to the cult would probably result in my having to leave the union. On top of my failure to match their devotion to the cause, this all happened more than 20 years before #MeToo. I politely declined his offer, which had made our work relationship unbearable, and kept working. But the shit really hit the fan when I decided to get married.

I was set to take a three-week honeymoon around the same time that a labor contract involving the largest employers in our sector was about to expire. My supervisor had approved my vacation request well in advance. But when the union president found out, he flipped. He called me into an empty office. He was agitated and said he wanted to block my honeymoon plans, but couldn’t do so in good conscience, given the prior approval. He said it was up to me to change my plans myself. Dumbass that I was, I agreed.

But my boyfriend saw the request as a litmus test for the rest of our lives together. He asked me not to delay our honeymoon for the union. I went back to the president and tearfully told him I couldn’t.

After this act of insubordination, I became the target of a subtle campaign to teach me that the union must come first. The president denied my request to leave the union hall—on a Saturday—to pick up my wedding shoes from a nearby shop. When I finished my assignment and left at the end of the day to run wedding errands, I was summoned and reprimanded for leaving before the rest of the staff had finished.

I pointed out that we didn’t normally need to be dismissed. The boss responded by criticizing me, but in a way designed to hurt a lefty do-gooder the most. He said that by questioning instructions and therefore implying that they weren’t clearly delivered, I was disrespecting a union leader whose first language was not English. I knew he was playing me, but I was still devastated.

I got married and enjoyed my honeymoon. Then I busted my ass for the contract campaign. I wanted to stay in the good fight, but my employer’s miserable work environment was too much. The final irony? The union staff actually had a staff union to which we also paid dues, but it did nothing to protect us. Not long after the contract was settled, I broke up with my job. But at least I’m still married.

This story is part of our Bad Bosses project, a reported collection of accounts from workers about their terrible bosses and the system that creates them. You can read more about the entire project and find every story here. Annotations—highlighted throughout—can be clicked for further context and comment from other parties. 
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/09/i-worked-at-a-labor-union-my-bosses-ran-it-like-a-cult/