from Los Angeles Times:
The Kabbalah Centre in Los Angeles is the focus of an IRS investigation into tax evasion
The Kabbalah Centre, the Los Angeles-based spiritual organization that mingles ancient Jewish mysticism with the glamour of its celebrity devotees, is the focus of a federal tax evasion investigation probing, among other things, the finances of two charities connected to Madonna, the center’s most famous adherent.
Sources familiar with the investigation said the criminal division of the IRS is looking into whether nonprofit funds were used for the personal enrichment of the Berg family, which has controlled the Kabbalah Centre for more than four decades, a period in which it expanded from one school of a little-known strain of Judaism to a global brand…
Investigators looking into the center’s finances face a complex organizational structure involving more than a dozen separate nonprofits and business entities with connections to the Bergs, according to public business records and sources familiar with the workings of Kabbalah. The total assets of the center are unclear because the parent organization, Kabbalah Centre International, has tax-exempt status as a church and is not required to make public its tax filings. A former CFO, Nicholas Boord Jr., who left the center in 2009, wrote in a resume posted online that the center had annual revenue of $60 million and assets that included a $200-million real estate portfolio and a $60-million investment fund.
