Pastor to submit accounts, despite ‘disagreement with law’

Tele-evangelist Gordon John Manché’s repeated failures to submit his organisation’s accounts to the Commissioner for NGOs is due to a disagreement with the law, according to the religious group’s financial consultant. 

“The most recent accounts [of Nations for Christ] will be presented in due course,” Reuben Buttigieg told MaltaToday. “The reason for this delay is not related to the operation of Nations for Christ but to matters relating to the way legislation relating to voluntary organisations in Malta has developed, matters that we will be discussing with the Commissioner for Voluntary Organisations.” 

Nations for Christ – which includes the evangelical fellowship River of Love that has courted controversy over alleged ‘gay conversion’ claims – have not submitted their accounts to the Commission since 2010. In that year, they declared an income of €149,899 solely from donations, a significant leap from the €43,298 declared in 2009. 

Their revenue is partially supported by tithes – donations of 10% of one’s salary, in accordance with an ancient biblical belief. 

As Nations for Christ have not declared their finances for the past three years, they are effectively in default – which disqualifies them from receiving government or EU funding.   

When approached by MaltaToday at the end of a conference on the 40th anniversary of the Helsinki OSCE conference yesterday, Manché insisted that he doesn’t interfere in River of Love’s financial affairs and leaves it all up to his accountant Reuben Buttigieg. 

Manché and Marius-Richard Cilia, a teacher at Nations for Christ Bible College, questioned why MaltaToday was specifically zooming in on River of Love’s financial affairs. “The NGO Commissioner said himself that several other NGOs are in our default state, so why are you focusing on River of Love?” they asked, adding that they and “many other people” would be “keeping an eye out” on the journalist who wrote a story about River of Love’s default state last week. 

Buttigieg, also the managing director of business advisor firm Erremme, has called for the goalposts to be moved so that ecclesiastical organisations would be classified separately from other voluntary organisations. 

“Regrettably, various administrations never addressed the matter in spite of it being discussed for a number of years,” Buttigieg said. “It is time that this is addressed as the mechanisms of a Church or a religious organisation are different from that of voluntary organisations.” 

However, NGO Commissioner Prof. Kenneth Wain insisted that all voluntary organisations should be regulated on a level-playing field. 

“If an organisation qualifies as a voluntary one, meaning that it is a non-profit organisation without any government control, then it should be subject to the exact same laws and regulations as all other voluntary organisations,” Wain told MaltaToday. 

Wain is an ardent critic of how the government has over the years granted blanket exemptions to several Catholic organisations not enrolled with the Commissioner, thereby allowing them to receive government grants without being regulated or legally accountable. 

He has called for enrolment in the commission to become compulsory, warning that the exemptions have created a “deficit of public accountability which damages the [voluntary] sector as a whole”.

‘Not accountant’s duty to verify Nations for Christ finances’ 

In his 2010 accountant’s report for Nations for Christ, Emanuel Fenech wrote that the financial statements were based solely on the “documentation presented and on representations made by Nations for Christ”. He also admitted that he was not always provided with supporting evidence to back up the representations and that he did not seek to verify their accuracy.

In the report’s final paragraph, he said that he doesn’t assume any responsibility for the truthfulness of the financial statement. Buttigieg clarified that Fenech’s statements were compliant with the law, as only NGOs that earn more than €200,000 are subject to an audit.